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Mystical Revelation by Botticelli |
by David Bowman
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| Sandro Botticelli, Mystical Nativiy |
At the end of the year 1500, Botticelli painted one of his most unusual works, which has since long been called the Mystical Nativity although its iconography is unusual for the nativity motif. It must have represented something special for Botticelli since it is his only knownsigned painting. His signature, Alexandros, is inscribed in Greek at the top of the canvas together with the description of the allegedly apocalyptic motive of the painting(1).
Botticelli's Florence was at the end of the 14th century disturbed by Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498), a rebellious Dominican priest who wanted to reform religious feelings of the mischievous Florentines. After the Medici's had been overthrown from the prime position in Florence, Savonarola took control of the city in 1494. The most barbaric endeavor of the Dominican friar and his followers was the famous Bonfire of Vanities in 1497, when everything associated with moral laxity, including the finest Florentine Renaissance artwork, was burnt on the famous bonfires. His sermons on revivified Christian fundamentalist ethics were packed with apocalyptic foreseeing of the coming new century. Pope Alexander VI excommunicated Savonarola and his extremely radical attitude towards spirituality finally brought him to the stake in 1498, when the Medici family regained control over Florence. Sandro's brother Simone, who had great influence over his brother, was a piagnone, an ardent follower of Savonarola(2). Vasari records that Sandro also became piagnone, but some modern scholars dispute that typically unreliable Vasari confused the two brothers.
According to Botticelli's inscriptions at the top of the painting, his work reflects catastrophic expectations of the fin de siecle echoing Savonarola's apocalyptic visions. This combination of two apparently opposing iconographic Christian motives of the mystical nativity and the final judgment makes this painting extraordinary complex in its symbolism. However, Botticelli's Mystical Nativity somehow lacks the expected intensity of the apocalyptic drama of the final judgment followed by the victory of the forces of 'good', but looks much more like an image of a carefully planned structure of a vertical and horizontal disposition of powers represented by the specific position that occupy various characters in the whole composition. The additions to the motive of nativity are heaven and hell, the two extremities between which a new life is celebrated.
The Great Pyramid of Nativity
The biggest surprise of this painting is concealed in the triangular shape of the roof of the stables. If the lines of the truncated triangle of the roof are extended, the triangle thus obtained closely resembles nothing else but the proportions of the Great Pyramid!
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| Proportions of the Great Pyramid of Giza concealed as an invisible extension of the roof over the stable in Botticelli’s painting Mystical Nativity. |
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The major difficulty concerning Botticelli's suggested knowledge of the correct proportions of the Great Pyramid is that sources available in his time reported no accurate dimensions of the Great Pyramid, at least not the sources that we know. An example of misleading classical sources is Herodotus, who erroneously reports that each side is measuring eight hundred feet, and the height of it is the same(3), which is far from the real proportions.
According to my calculations of the original proportions of the Great Pyramid in ancient royal Egyptian cubits (= 52,4cm) are, within a very small margin of error, 440 for the base and 280 royal cubits for the height of the pyramid. These proportions reveal what has been measured from the angle of the slope and that is that the height of the pyramid related to its base encodes the rational approximation of Pi as 22:7.
Perhaps there is also another way that Botticelli encoded his knowledge of the proportions of the Great Pyramid. Significant is the total number of the figures arranged in several groups. The figures around the holy trinity, accompanied by a bull and an ass, are gathered in groups and their numbers are conveying symbolic messages. The total number of surrounding angels and human figures in different groups is:
12 = angels dancing in heavens (Zodiac)
3 = angels sitting on the roof (Air, Fire, Water)
7 = 4 figures on the left and 3 on the right side of the trinity (Planets)
6 = angels and persons at the bottom of the painting (Earth(4)).
The sum of all the figures around the holy trinity is therefore 28, which could be repeating 280 royal cubits of the height of the Great Pyramid. Number 28 is symbolically expressing 'perfection' since it is the second of the so-called perfect numbers(5). Without the six figures from the bottom of the painting the total number of figures counts to 22, which could be synonymous with 2x220 royal cubits of the base of the pyramid.
A suggestion that the angle of the roof that maintains the Pi ratio was deliberately chosen, is found also between the pillars that support the roof over the stable, which are equally proportioned.
It seems that some internal features also coincide with the features of the painting. It seems than Botticelli was aware of the underground chamber, which is one of the specifics of the Great Pyramid. He represented it as a cave inside the rocks upon which the symbolic pyramid stands. The Great Pyramid is in fact built upon a solid rock, which is one of the reasons that it endured through roughness of time and earthquakes so well. The question that imposes itself is how could Botticelli know all this compositional and architectonic features about the Great Pyramid?
IAO: Isis-Apophis-Osiris
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| Symbolic geometry behind the composition of Botticelli's Mystical Nativity |
The symbolic geometry behind the composition is very straightforward: the symbolic triangle of the pyramid is placed as the mediator between a square that represents the earth and a circle that represents the heavens. In other words, Botticelli's symbolic composition represents a square 'metamorphing' through a triangle into a circle. It could also represent the allegorical squaring of the circle with the triangle as the intermediate stage(6).
The three archetypal figures - a circle, a triangle, and a square - resemble the shape of three letters that reveal an important gnostic formula of the ancients. A circle is naturally representing the letter 'O', a triangle is an abstracted letter 'A', and finally a square could represent the Greek letter 'I' which was also written as 'И' just like it is preserved in the Cyrillic alphabet. The initials that these three planar figures spell out are therefore IAO, which was one of the famous tutelary names of the supreme deity of the Gnostics.
The letters IAO can be explained as an acronym of the Egyptian deities personifying the basic principles of the universe that total in the formula of the cycle of birth-dead-resurrection(7):
| Letter |
Egyptian deity |
Stage |
| I |
Isis |
Birth |
| A |
Apophis/Set |
Death |
| O |
Osiris |
Resurrection |
The first stage of the IAO formula comes under the name of Isis and represents the birth or generation as the initial stage of every anabolic process, it involves enthusiasm of creation. After the initial stage a catabolic stage of decay follows, symbolized by Osiris' murderer Set/Apophis, also called Typhoon by the Greeks. The last stage, concluding the gnostic IAO formula, represents the resurrection as symbolized by Osiris. In this manner was described by the ancient natural philosophers the essential principal of transformation as observed in the nature(8).
In addition the three angels sitting on the roof with their specific colors of gowns - white, red, and green - could reflect the three before-mentioned Egyptian deities. Isis as the goddess of nature and purity is typically white, Set/Apophys is traditionally attributed red and Osiris, as the vegetation god, is in the Egyptian Book of Dead represented as green skinned.
But not only could the three angels be interpreted as the famous Egyptian trinity of Isis, Set, and Osiris, so well documented by Plutarch. The three figures below them even more explicitly resemble the Egyptian gods. The bull can easily be related to Osiris since the bull Apis was his sacred animal, an ass was the animal traditionally associated by the Egyptians with Set, and from Gnostic perspective was the Virgin Mary a derivation of the goddess Isis. The Egyptian trinity was completed by the child Horus and the image of Isis nursing young Horus was a popular iconography among the Egyptians.
If my interpretation is at least partly correct, then Botticelli wanted to say something that was in those 'enlightened' times forbidden, but obviously studied. Otherwise, he would need not to devise a riddle that kept the message protected from the profane and him from the stake. It seems that Botticelli's composition is in line with many other renaissance attempts of the reconciliation of Christianity with the pagan philosophy, especially those of the Gnostics.
1 - This picture, at the end of the year 1500, in the troubles of Italy, I Alessandro, in the half-time after the time(?), painted, according to the eleventh [chapter] of Saint John, in the second woe of the Apocalypse, during the release of the devil for three-and-a-half years; then he shall be bound in the twelfth [chapter] and we shall see [him buried] as in this picture. - The National Gallery, London
2 - Ronald Lightbown, Botticelli - Life and Work, p.230
3 - Herodotus, An Account of Egypt
4 - The Platonic solid associated with the Element Earth is the cube which has six sides.
5 - The first 4 perfect numbers, 6, 28, 496 and 8128 were known to the late Greeks. Nicomachus and Iamblicus listed all 4 and Iamblicus, not unnaturally bearing in mind that he had no conception of the number base 10 as mathematically arbitrary, conjectured that there was one perfect number for each number of digits, and further that they not only ended in either 6 or 8, which is true, but that the 6s and 8s alternate, which is not.
6 - By means of reason, or intellect, is the base matter transformed into spirit.
7 - This idea is close to is comparable to Ficino's Neoplatonic dialectics emanatio - rapto - remeatio (emanation - rapture/conversion - re-ascent). See The Birth of Venus and La Primavera Conjoined
8 - A better illustration of this process is a vertically expanding spiral, which from the top looks like a circle, but advances vertically if seen along the timeline.
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