Great little one, whose all-embracing birth Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heav’n to earth.

A large print of Botticelli's "Virgin Adoring the Christ Child" hangs above my desk. I bought it at the National Galleries in Edinburgh and I've been to see it three times this year. I've written about it before, and with Advent approaching I thought it was as valid an anticipation of Christmas as the switching on of lights events, the premature carol-fest in every shop with piped music, or the early intimations of panic that it's time to write Christmas cards to all those who might send me one:)

During Advent I'll post a few meditations on several of my favourite paintings of the Incarnation. Some of the finest theology I've ever read explores the mystery of the Word made flesh, the paradox of how "unto us a child is born" could ever be made congruent with "Emmanuel", God with us.

One of the significant deficits in the spiritual theology of Evangelicals is the loss of transcendent mystery, impatience with that which requires our silence rather than our words, suspicion of image, icon and symbol, and therefore an impoverished life of the imagination, an atrophy of the sense of wonder, and the loss of devotional nourishment sought beyond the usual preference for words over silence, ideas before image, and praise as experiential celebration of the personal. Or is that only me? 

The contrast between the restored Botticelli above, and the same painting before its recent restoration is, to put it in the wonderfully pompous language of the Victorian Sunday School teacher, "instructive". A layer of discoloured varnish accumulated over slow centuries, so tones the colour down that it lacks brightness and contrast. So the vivid colours and detailed symbolism is lost. A masterpiece now lacks vitality. The richly textured embroidery of the robe is hidden, the detailed beauty of the roses flattened, the variegated foliage reduced to blurred green, and the light and shade, so theologically precise as illumined night, merges into mere foreboding shadow.

The restored painting recovers all that was hidden, overlaid, and deadened by decades of dust. Advent is a time when my capacity for wonder, beauty and adoration is in desperate need of the same process of restoration, recovery and enjoyment. Richard Crashaw's long poem, "In the Holy Nativity of Our Lord", describes the Advent disposition of wonder, and is perhaps the best commentary on Botticelli's masterpiece. The words would not be out of place as a description of the Virgin's thoughts - nor of our own awakening to the wonder and miracle that is Advent. 

Welcome, all wonders in one sight!

       Eternity shut in a span;

Summer in winter; day in night;

       Heaven in earth, and God in man.

Great little one, whose all-embracing birth

Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heav’n to earth.

Comments

[ruthg]

Thank you for this

[chris]

This made my heart leap with remembering and recognition. I don't know if you ever saw this - not quite up to Crashaw, but the same wonder!

[Jim Gordon]

Chris posted a link to her comment but it din't work - so here it is now. too good to miss - go see

http://frankly-chris.blogspot.com/2006/12/adoring-virgin-adoring-night-we-invaded.html