Mosaic with The Birth of the Virgin and the Prophets Isaiah and Nahum, Giovanni Leonardelli and Ugolino di Prete Ilario, Orvieto, 1365 (with later modifications)

This mosaic is from Orvieto Cathedral in central Italy, displayed over the right-hand doorway of the west front of the cathedral. An inscription tells us that this was the work of Giovanni Leonardelli and Ugolino di Prete Ilario, which they dated 1365. Leonardelli was a Franciscan friar who worked as a mosaicist at Orvieto from March 1360 to September 1370, and di Prete Ilario was a painter who provided a cartoon on which this mosiac was based. The composition is very similar to that of a fresco of the same scene that di Prete Ilario produced between 1370 and 1377 for the choir of Orvieto Cathedral.

Here we see represented in mosaic the birth of the Virgin Mary, mother of Christ. Mary's mother was St Anne, the figure reclining on the bed that bisects the mosaic. In the sky above are the prophets Nahum and Isaiah. Isiah prophesised the coming of Christ with the words 'A young woman is with child and she will bear a son.'

Nahum, meanwhile, is a prophet mentioned only once in the entire Bible (Nahum 1:1). His Hewbrew name, the shortened version of Nehemiah, means 'to comfort' or 'to console', and is a symbolic figure intended to comfort and console the oppressed and afflicted people of Judah. St. Jerome located the birthplace of Nahum ("Comment. in Nah." in P. L., XXV, 1232), to Elkozeh, in northern Galilee, but the significance of Nahum is more as a cosoling figure for the suffering people to which Mary and Anne belonged, and a hint of glorious future to come.

As already said, Mary was the daughter of Anne, in whom occured the Immaculate Conception, which refers to the conception of Mary, and not, as is so often supposed, Mary's virgin conception of Jesus by Mary. The Virgin was chosen by God to be vessel of Christ's Incarnation, indeed pre-ordained from the beginning of time, for which reason she alone was free of 'Original Sin' that haunted all other members of humankind. Whether the Immaculate Conception was possible was the subject of fierce debate by medieval thinkers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Dominican Order, among them St Thomas Aquinas, denied the possibility of the Immaculate Conception, but the Franciscans upheld it as fact, and it may therefore be significant that the author of this magnificent mosaic was himself a member of the Franciscan Order. From the later Middle Ages, a number of papal rulings came down on the side of the Franciscans.

These mosaic panels, based on a design by Ugolino di Prete Ilario (active 1357, died after 1403) were originally displayed high above a doorway on the west front of Orvieto Cathedral. They were part of a larger decorative scheme. The large central panel of the Birth of the Virgin is flanked with panels showing the prophets Nahum and Isaiah. The mosaics at Orvieto have been restored many times over the centuries. These panels were removed during restoration in 1786 and replaced with a copy.

256-1891