The thirteenth century remains a golden age of Western civilization, through the flourishing of theology, philosophy, pilgrimage, and art. Grand cathedrals were built in France, evoking transcendent beauty through their intricate interweaving of stone and glass, while marble sculptures appeared to defy gravity, floating above their pedestals. The shimmering pages of illuminated manuscripts invited the reader to delve into the wonders and mysteries of scripture.

In the latter half of the thirteenth century, however, the expression of beauty became more earthbound, anchored to nature and reflective of Jesus’ human experience. This shift in emphasis from celestial to terrestrial would become one driver of the dawning Renaissance, when the representation of innate human dignity and confidence in people’s perception of reality would transform the history of art.

Standing at the cusp of this new age was a small group of Italian artists led by Giotto di Bondone, whose Nativity masterfully exemplifies the iconography of this new era. Painted between 1310 and 1315 for the Lower Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, this fresco provides a series of visual clues to understanding this moment of artistic innovation.

Giotto’s panels depicting the life of Christ were certainly not the first medieval attempt at an immersive view of the Gospels. In the sixth century, the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna depicted the Gospel narrative in a Byzantine mosaic cycle, while thirteenth-century Paris saw the subject unfold in the iridescent stained glass windows of the Sainte-Chappelle. Giotto himself had attempted the subject in Padua’s Scrovegni Chapel a decade prior. In Assisi, the Florentine master returned to the theme, producing a work reflective of the revolutionary spirit of the religious order that had commissioned it.

The Order of Friars Minor, founded in 1209 by Saint Francis of Assisi, captured popular imagination in the thirteenth century through the friars’ vivid preaching. This order, known more popularly as the Franciscans, sought to present the life and teachings of Christ in a widely accessible fashion. They embraced the long alliance between faith and art by patronizing new and innovative artists who could render the ancient scripture more immediate and applicable to modern times.

Writing from Oxford in 1260, Friar Roger Bacon – known today as the Doctor Mirabilis – encouraged the training of artists in geometry so they could master the new science of perspective. He hoped that painters would be able to “make literal the spiritual sense” so that “the ineffable beauty of divine wisdom would shine” when the stories and settings of scripture were “placed before our eyes in their physical forms.” Bacon suggested that a few artists in Italy were already accomplishing this, such as Duccio and Cimabue, Giotto’s teacher. As a possible early member of the Franciscans’ third order himself, Giotto would spend most of his life working for the Franciscans. He fulfilled Bacon’s hope and, as Giorgio Vasari put it, “by God’s favor, rescued and restored art.”

The Assisi Nativity reveals Giotto’s groundbreaking approach to this new spirituality.

Early icons placed the Nativity in a cave, a tradition that drew together Christ’s birth and death in a single setting. But Giotto, like Duccio and Cimabue before him, created a composite scene of both cave and stable – presenting the reality of a structure familiar to the denizens of Umbria while maintaining the symbolism of the cave. The scene itself is painted in the lower basilica, a crypt-like space under the lofty upper basilica, more suited to contemplation. Giotto’s pale backdrop of stone and stable contrasted against a lapis blue sky lends a sense of mystery to the scene.

The upper section of the scene remains firmly in the realm of the mystical – an impressive array of angels arches up toward the heavens while another bows in obedience around the Christ Child. This dual movement is linked by a beam of golden light pouring down from above: the ancient creed of the Word made flesh, made visible through art.

Mary is wrapped in the same celestial blue, with no sign of her more typical underdress in red or white. The pigment is made from ground lapis lazuli – the most expensive pigment for paintings of the time. At the center of the work, Mary raises her son up, gazing lovingly at the white-robed Christ Child, her gesture suggestive of the elevation of the Eucharistic host.

Association with the liturgy continues with the manger behind the Madonna and Child. The long wooden trough resembles a coffin, while Mary’s white mattress recalls the stone slab of the altar. This part of the image, bracketed by angels and marked by joyful adoration (even the ox and ass appear to smile), glorifies the coming of Christ and the triumph over death through his divine power.

Along the lower edge of the panel, however, there is a secondary scene, where the Christ Child appears again. Giotto gives us an unprecedented view of the infant Jesus in scenes that seem almost simultaneous. As the angels rejoice, the practicalities of a newborn child are being tended to. Two women wash and feed the baby; the cloth, the basin, and the spoon are all common elements of daily medieval life, and here Giotto underscores that the incarnation of Christ also meant subjection to vulnerability and helplessness like every other human being. A pedagogical message to skeptics is delivered in the portrayal of the midwife closest to the viewer. The midwife pictured, Salome, is mentioned in the apocryphal Gospel of James as punished with a withered hand for doubting the virginity of Mary; it was cured only when she held the Christ Child.

The animals also act as witnesses gathered below. Curious, timid, and distracted, they encompass the myriad reactions of Christ’s flock to this momentous event. On the opposite end sits Joseph, supervising the cleansing of the newborn Jesus. He shares the earth-shattering moment with Mary, but while Mary gazes at the divinity of Christ alongside a chorus of angels, Joseph contemplates his humanity. Joseph watches Jesus’ human needs while Mary studies him amid the angels: two figures of Christ, two natures of Christ. It falls to Joseph to protect, feed, and teach this child, to be a father to his Lord and Savior. His short white hair and trim beard alongside his yellow and blue robes bear a striking resemblance to the iconography of Saint Peter. Giotto painted Saint Peter in the same garb with similar features in his frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel. As Joseph was entrusted with supporting the earthly mission of Jesus, his role became a model for the papacy in the period, exhorting the pontificate to tend Christ’s flock as Joseph had done for Christ.

Two shepherds marvel at an angel welcoming them into Christ’s presence. One is startled, almost appearing to ward off the supernatural occurrence, while the other turns toward the heavenly messenger. While Joseph calmly contemplates the irruption of the divine into the everyday, the shepherds react more dramatically. The shepherd’s turn toward the angels not only draws the eye back to the stable but makes viewers aware that this display has been created for them. Giotto has created a window into another world to witness the birth of Christ.

The stable beams receding toward the wall of the cave are an early instance of perspective, fulfilling Bacon’s call to bring the literal and naturalistic view into art. Giotto assembles animals, angels, shepherds, holy parents, and beholders into one cloud of witnesses. Viewers of this work can feel present at the scene, but as witnesses, they can be called upon to testify. The pleasure of this beauty comes at a price; having been received, the Good News must be passed on.

Giotto’s innovations did not meet immediate approval. His development of pictorial space, viewer engagement, and representations of human sentiments spoke at first more to followers of the mendicant orders than to society as a whole. But the fourteenth century, with the suffering of the Black Death, the pope’s exile in Avignon, and the end of the Christian claim on the Holy Land, would require visual reminders that Christ had known exile, abandonment, and death. These conditions allowed Giotto’s new style of art to gain ground and eventually flower in the Renaissance. Giotto’s Nativity not only depicted the birth of Christ but gave birth to a new Christian humanism in the visual arts that would remain one of Christendom’s greatest cultural triumphs.