Madonna of the Snows
Visiting the celebrated Uffizi galleries in Florence is an ordeal. They have been sucked into the dark hole of bucket-list-driven mass tourism, and the opportunity to contemplate their celebrated collections requires teeth-gritted determination. Yet even in the Uffizi there are nooks and crannies that are but lightly affected by the crowds, and one of them is an annex at the tail end of the itinerary, in which is housed the Contini-Bonacossi bequest. Among its notable works of art is an altarpiece made in 1432 by a painter known as Sassetta for a side-chapel of the Duomo in Siena, dedicated to the Madonna of the Snows. I think it is one of the greatest pictures in the world – an absurd claim, but there you go.
To be clear, I am not sure than any one else (at least in the museum-going public) thinks it is one of the great masterpieces of world art. I spent about ninety minutes with it, and in that time, few visitors did more than glance at it and move on. That’s understandable. Unlike, say, an Impressionist, it depicts something which many do not believe in, and employs symbolism few understand. Also, unlike an Impressionist, it’s not brightly colored: its once resplendent surface has suffered from the passage of time, through darkening and loss of pigment. There is no question that a picture like this is an acquired taste. But like many undervalued relics of the past, given the opportunity, it can still cast a spell so strong that you don’t want to walk away, evidence for my absurd claim that it is “one of the greatest pictures in the world”.
The mystery of faith it depicts, the “Madonna of the Snows”, has its origin in story about a miraculous snowfall in August, which in the 4th century spurred the building of the great basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome, a narrative recounted in the much smaller images of the predella (the strip underneath the main panel). It’s an obscure bit of church legend, prized for various reasons I won’t get into now, but at a deep level keyed into the purity of Christ, “who was made very man, of the substance of the Virgin Mary his mother, and that without spot of sin, to make us clean from all sin”. “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow”.
If you go online and find a photograph of the altarpiece, you will see a large panel (about eight feet square) surmounted by a framework of three ornamental arches. Though Fra Angelico probably led the way a few years before in unifying the compartmentalized niches of the medieval polyptych in one pictorial space, and its figures in one integrated group (the “sacra conversazione”), it’s evident that Sassetta caught up quickly and exploited the possibilities boldly. This master of the Sienese school exploits these Florentine innovations in the volumetric depiction of bodies occupying a plausible space, but produces quite a different effect from the heroic monumentality they favored. It is more Siena’s poetry than Florence’s prose; dreamy and dynamic, stern and mirthful, sensuously beautiful and shockingly ascetic, utterly removed and completely available.
In the center enthroned before a richly brocaded cloth of honor is a tall and slender Virgin, whose mantle (now almost black, but perhaps once a deep ultramarine) pools in elegant arabesques on a byzantine carpet. Angels depicted in sharp foreshortening worthy of Masaccio hold a crown above her head. On her knee is a hefty and vigorous infant Christ of heroic nudity (an emblem of his true Manhood), whose right knee and foot seem to swing out of the pictorial space into our own – also very Masaccio. But on each side there are angels, one grinning wickedly as he holds a tray of snow (now grey rather than white), and another making snowballs – a delightful allusion to the “snows” of the altar’s title – and that’s very Sienese. The Apostles Peter and Paul stand on either side with stern reverence, and in front of them, each kneeling on one knee, and thrusting forth the other knee modelled volumetrically in light and shadow, are John the Baptist and Francis of Assisi. They look outwards at the worshippers even as they point to Mother and Child. Recent research has established that the altarpiece was positioned to the left of, and at right angles to, what was then a frequently used side entrance to the Duomo – so that the moment worshippers arrived, John engaged them with his gaze and gesture, as also does the Child he points to. His Mother and Francis also hold us with their own gazes, both inviting and challenging. We are being drawn into relationship, into the communion of saints – of Christ and his Church – that already exists between the figures themselves. It’s a visual message made verbally explicit in the biblical texts they hold – “Behold the lamb of God”, and “Come unto me, all ye that travail, and are heavy laden”. Once you grasp the message, both verbal and visual, that this image speaks, it’s very hard to walk away.
What is true about one particular old painting you perhaps will never see can be said of many old and undervalued things – like the old Prayer Book, the Bible, the Christian religion itself. If you look at them for a quick rush, to tick a box on your bucket-list, you are going to miss what’s really there. But if you let them speak, they will. And you will find it very hard to walk away.