The Mystic Nativity

The Mystic Nativity is the only painting Sandro Botticelli ever signed, carrying a Greek inscription on the upper frame that dates it and links the scene to the apocalyptic sermons of the Florentine friar Girolamo Savonarola. Shown completing a circle around the holy family with Mary, the infant Christ and angels dancing overhead in the branches, the picture turns the Nativity into a private vision of a troubled age. Completed in 1500, in the aftermath of Savonarola’s preaching and the painter’s late religious fervour, it is today among the most celebrated canvases in the National Gallery in London.