Delicacy of faces, refinement of details, tenderness… Botticelli’s Nativity revisited today
Become a brother? A hell of an adventure. This is what has just happened to Joseph, 3 and a half years old, who is contemplating – interrogatively? worried? – the face of Jean, who came into the world barely three months ago. His mother, Marie, 35, is attentive to both during this extraordinary presentation which will be repeated every day. What will happen from this meeting of siblings? What will we become through it?
A few centuries earlier, the Florentine painter Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) had already attempted to provide some answers. He must have experienced it himself, the youngest in fragile health of a family of four boys. Entering as an apprentice in Filippo Lippi’s workshop, he quickly trained at his school, before setting up on his own six years later. Around a hundred works by Botticelli – paintings, frescoes, illuminations – of rare elegance have come down to us, including many Madonnas.
Among these Madonna and Child around ten also welcome the figure of John the Baptist, the second cousin of Jesus according to the Gospel. An increasingly significant theme for the aging artist. Because what remains of our bonds, at the end of a life? Perhaps the growing wonder at the unthinkable that still happens: because, yes, the sky has visited and still visits the earth. “Whatever is weak in the world, this is what God has chosen to cover up what is strong with confusion,” Saint Paul expresses it in his own way (1 Cor 1:27). The evangelist John adds, stunned: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. » (Jn 1:14). The Creator comes to be born at His creation, without pretense.
What if our faces testified to it? Today, exchanging glances seems easy, like this mother does with her children. But with Botticelli, in the 16th century, the eyes are almost closed. Everything happens inside, at the most intimate level. With this very spiritual melancholy of those who assume their destiny from a very young age.
The Creator comes to clothe our flesh with a garment of light. Far from the functional clothes of our daily life. Also far from the baroque clothing of the Renaissance. The habit of the Virgin painted by Botticelli offers a symphony of intersecting red, blue and green cloaks, tunics and veils: joy of births; grace of maturity; pains of Passion. John, who will become the Baptist, is wrapped in his animal skin, holding in his hand his stick of reeds which already forms a cross. From there springs the whiteness of Jesus’ body. Of a shocking nudity. Jesus literally falls towards the earth, into the arms of his cousin who welcomes him, turned towards the sky. Their two faces almost merge, in a touching brotherly embrace. Three hands also cross in an astonishing spiral: the hand of Mary, carrying her son and placed on her side from which, later, the living water of her final baptism will flow. That of John leaping tenderly around the neck of the One who comes.
And the hand of Jesus, caressing John’s cheek, as if to thank him already for his courage. A large burning rose bush blazes at the back and a delicate parterre of greenery evokes the garden of beginnings. Heaven and earth embrace each other. Becoming a brother is therefore possible. Christ enables us to do this.
