Mary Enthroned with the Child and the two Johns, ‘Bardi Altar’

The scheme of composition of the Virgin and Child enthroned, surrounded by saints and viewed in a unified, square picture became extremely popular throughout the Renaissance and was later called sacra conversazione or “holy conversation”. This is a Florentine invention, due to Fra Angelico in the mid-1430s in an attempt of modernising the ancient formula of the polyptychs. Soon enough, it became the norm for altar painting in the city of Florence. The altarpiece for the funeral chapel of the Florentine merchant Giovanni d’Angelo de’ Bardi (1433–88) is no exception to this rule. Giovanni de’ Bardi, who came from a Florentine patrician family, had made his fortune in London, working in particular for the Medici bank. Returning to his hometown in the early 1480s to spend the last years of his life, it was naturally towards the Medici that he had turned himself to find artists capable of adorning a chapel that would ensure the peace of his soul. The chapel was placed in his parish church of Santo Spirito, recently completed after the initial plans of Filippo Brunelleschi. The chosen architect was Giuliano da Sangallo, who in the same years began the construction of the Medici Villa in Poggio a Caiano; his frame carved for the present altarpiece is now lost but must have been in a skilful antique style, with decorations similar to those seen at the base of the Virgin’s throne. The painter was Sandro Botticelli, who had recently created outstanding masterpieces for the Medici, to begin with the Primavera and the Birth of Venus (both in the Uffizi), and had just returned from a stay in Rome where he had participated to the frescoed decoration of the Sistine Chapel.
In comparison to the Birth of Venus, the atmosphere is quite different in the present painting. It is true that the theme is religious and not pagan, but still: John the Baptist could have been more undressed (on the model of Botticelli’s Saint Sebastian, painted a decade before and also preserved in the Gemäldegalerie); as for the Virgin, she hides the breast she presses in order to breastfeed Christ, quite the opposite of the naked Venus who did so much for Botticelli’s glory (the painter and his workshop made a few replicas of the Birth of Venus with the Venus alone over a black background, one of which is now in the Gemäldegalerie; fig. p. 343). But times were changing, especially in Florence where one was realizing that the unlimited glorification of pagan antiquity that was at the heart of the Renaissance sometimes conflicted with Christian morals. This is the moment when Botticelli began representing ascetic figures (the Baptist), severe faces (the Evangelist John, recognisable by the eagle hidden behind him), or veiled nudities (Mary’s breast). Soon, he would burn some of the panels with undressed women he had painted during the previous years, and follow the rigid dictatorship established in Florence in 1494 by the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola.
But we are not at that stage yet; in this altarpiece, Botticelli is still the painter of the Primavera, the one who represents plants and flowers with the accuracy of a botanist. In fact, the three niches surrounding the saints, in the background, are not made of stone, as was the tradition in the “holy conversations”, but entirely built with foliage. This unique choice had a peculiar signification, explained by the inscriptions visible on the ribbons of paper surrounding the vases behind the figures. Almost all are taken from the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Ancient Testament, and were cited in the 15th century during the prayers to the Virgin. They evoke the planting of trees, and especially palm, cedar, cypress and olive trees – the four species of wood from which the Cross of Jesus-Christ was made, according to the 12th-century theologian Hugh of Saint Victor. As for the lilies crowning the throne of the Virgin, they evoke the purity of Mary, symbolized by the whole background of vegetation: it is certainly a garden, but a closed one, just as Mary remained Virgin, not penetrated by any man. The association of the Virgin Mary with a hortus conclusus or “enclosed garden” was common enough not to escape the viewer of the time; it is unlikely, however, that anyone could read the inscriptions without knowing them previously. The full significance of the altarpiece was reserved to the happy few.
In this altarpiece, Botticelli is therefore both expressionist in his physiognomies, drawn from his recognizable line, and symbolist in the choice of plants in the background (that the two Saints are called John is no coincidence either, the patron of the work calling himself Giovanni). The painter shows his mimetic skills not only in the accuracy in which he paints the vegetation: at the centre, in the very foreground of the painting, a fictive painted panel is placed in front of a vase (which also represents the Virgin). It shows a Crucifixion on a blue background and does not seem to belong to the same reality as the rest of the painting: the vase casts a shadow on the parapet in the foreground, but not the Crucifixion. It is as if it were a real tabernacle door, which one could open through the altarpiece in order to reach the host and the mass wine, which were considered as the Body and Blood of Christ. There is no doubt that this trompe-l’oeil effect must have been even more striking when the altarpiece was still in its original location, in the first chapel to the left of the apse of the church of Santo Spirito.
One last detail has not attracted much attention: in the coloured marble plaque on the left basis of the Virgin’s throne, one can clearly distinguish a male profile, crowned with laurels (fig. p. 339). Is it a free copy from an antique medal, an idealized portrait of some humanist, or of the most famous admirer of antiquity in Florence at the time, Lorenzo the Magnificent. This has yet to be investigated. Neville Rowley | 200 Masterpieces of European Painting - Gemäldegalerie Berlin, 2019