MADONNA COL BAMBINO E SAN GIOVANNINO
The Madonna and Child with the infant St. John, on display in the Sala d’Ercole in Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, has been variously attributed. The Museum tag says “Jacopo del Sellaio”, but the catalog entry under no. 00292620 reads that the painting is best attributed to Sebastiano Mainardi (1466-1513), member of the clique of Ghirlandaio that worked in Florence at the end of ‘400. It is also stated that there are some remarkable resemblances with works of Lorenzo di Credi, especially in the figure of the Madonna. This is the painting that more than any other has sparked discussions among ufologists, who see in the upper-right scene behind the Madonna the proof of a “close encounter” with an un-identified flying object. In the above mentioned scene we see a character keeping a hand to his forehead and looking towards an apparition in the sky. With him there is a dog, which also looks towards the strange object. In an article by Daniele Bedini on Notiziario UFO n. 7 (Jul-Aug 1996) it says: « We clearly see the presence of an airborne object leaden in color and inclined to port, sporting a “dome” or “turret”, apparently identifiable as an oval-shaped moving flying device». But this is not the only peculiarity of the painting: for example, to the upper left we see the Nativity Star with three other small stars, or perhaps flames. A very similar detail is present in the Madonna of the Book (1480) by Sandro Botticelli. These particulars – three stars, a luminous cloud – tell us that this painting follows an ancient iconography, an austere and rigid way for interpreting not only sacred subjects but city life itself, which had been preached by Fra’ (Brother) Girolamo Savonarola, and precisely in the Florence of the end of the 15-th century. After the Medici family had been driven out, Florence declared the Republic, which Savonarola oriented in a teocratic fashion, exerting a pervasive surveillance of the people and their ways (nowadays we could draw a parallel with the Islam fundamentalists of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran Republic), even to the point of the “vanity bonfires”, where game cards, dices, wigs and fineries together with trinkets and baubles, books considered obscene and even pictures and precious objects were gathered and set on fire. Savonarola’s preachings greatly influenced works of art of the period and several artists, for example Sandro Botticelli, reneged their own preceding works as heathen, and set to represent mystical subjects in a “purer”, but also more rigid, archaic and didascalic style. The religious symbology which we find in this Madonna is therefore in line with this older iconography that in the Florence of the humanism and Neo-Platonism had been lost. The three stars, for example, appear often in the paintings of the previous century, and especially in the byzantine icons of the Madonna; often, they were painted on her veil, on the shoulders and forehead; other times they are replaced by three rays; they always represent the “threefold virginity” of the Madonna, i.e., before, during, and after the virgin birth. The three stars, in the same meaning, are also found on the coat of arms of the Oratorian order of Saint Filippo Neri (hence, also called “Filippini”), who are particularly devout to the Madonna. Illustration: Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John. Attributed to Sebastiano Mainardi or Jacopo del Sellaio. – Firenze, Palazzo Vecchio Museum, Sala d’Ercole.~♥¤♥~
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ufoart/UFOArt2/arteufo05.htm — con William H. Strong, Nikki Mackenzie, Yayuk Putri, Lisa Benecke, William Herbert, Yanni, Rick Trombetta, Leonardo Melis, Awakened Indigo, Susan Kentwell, Godis Love, Milena Castillo, Mari Geiger-Howiler, Les Decker, Maryann Vicari, Susan Carlyon, Magdalena Mau, Nicole Yvette Devine, Magdalena Bernhard, Piotrek Starchild, Edmund Gwi, Andrea Morgan-Power, Telepathic Tiger III, Mags Dee, Jacqueline Pathfinder, John Freeman, Lucyan Loki Lookinit, Nikola Illusion, Jim Forbes, Ufo Area, Agape Satori, Maggy Mae, Aliens Ufo, Gilgamesh Anunnaki, Cherokee Sunnyshine Miller, Dean Corso, Rebecca BlackRaven, Sunset Lights, Los Vaginos e Betty Young.
☯ Alessandro Sicuro 