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, London.