This is a really radical take on the Resurrection.  It is inspired by Millenarianism, whose followers believed that the world would come to an end, to be transformed as predicted in the Book of Revelation.

 

Mystic Nativity is an extremely beautiful pictorial equivalent to those sandwich boards reading "The End Is Nigh". But though Botticelli, like a number of Florentine artists, seems to have grown a bit odd as he grew older, he was not alone in his millenarianism. Such cults have been endemic in European history, and one version swept Florence just before the beginning of the 16th century.

 

Moreover, the end of the world had already begun, and people in Florence were living in the in-between period - "the half time after the time" - during which the devil is unleashed before the Second Coming of Christ. It can also be seen as an attack on the established church and city state rulers like the Medici family.

 

The painting emerged from Florence in a time when the fanatical preacher Savonarola held the city in its grip. He had been repelled by the town’s artistic glory and enormous wealth. He preached that this was a corrupt and vice-ridden place. A great scourge was approaching – and then his words had assumed a terrifying reality.

 

In 1494 a huge French army invaded Italy and 10,000 troops entered Florence so that the Florentines feared the King of France meant to sack the city. Savonarola stepped into the political vacuum; he met with the French king and persuaded him to leave Florence peacefully. 

 

In their gratitude and relief the Florentines increasingly saw the friar as a prophet and his preaching attracted huge crowds to Florence Cathedral. Savonarola claimed that Florence could become the new Jerusalem if the citizens would repent and abandon their sinful luxuries – and that included much of their art. The youth of the city, like Mao's Red Guard, took to upbraiding their elders. Taverns were closed, prostitutes driven away, good works done. In place of carnival, there were the "bonfires of the vanities" on which sinful mirrors, wigs, musical instruments and salacious paintings were heaped. His beliefs were made real as groups of evangelical youths went onto the streets to encourage people to part with their luxuries, their lewd pictures and books, their vanities, combs, mirrors. It seems that Savonarola bears directly upon the Mystical Nativity.

 

Botticelli died in 1510. The Mystical Nativity remained hidden until the 19th Century.  William Young Ottley, an art lover, keeper of paintings at the British Museum and generously bankrolled via a slave plantation in the Caribbean, bought up many paintings cheaply. At the Villa Aldobrandini he saw a small, unknown work, Botticelli's Mystical Nativity. Botticelli was then in obscurity so prices were low.