Dionysius Exiguus

Magi

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• published: 04 Apr 2013
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Adoration of the Magi,by Giatto. 1305. Was the star actually a Comet This painting from the 1300's suggests it was. Giotto Genius Nationality Italian Field Painting, Fresco, Architecture Movement Late Gothic Works Scrovegni Chapel frescoes, Campanile Giotto di Bondone (1266/7 -- January 8, 1337), better known simply as Giotto, was an astoundingly talented Italian painter and architect from Florence in the late Middle Ages. He is generally considered the first in a line of great artists who contributed to the Italian Renaissance. Giotto's contemporary, the banker and chronicler Giovanni Villani, wrote that Giotto was "the most sovereign master of painting in his time, who drew all his figures and their postures according to nature. And he was given a salary by the Comune of Florence in virtue of his talent and excellence." The late-16th century biographer Giorgio Vasari describes Giotto as making a decisive break with the prevalent Byzantine style and as initiating "the great art of painting as we know it today, introducing the technique of drawing accurately from life, which had been neglected for more than two hundred years." Giotto's masterwork is the decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, also known as the Arena Chapel, completed around 1305. This fresco cycle depicts the life of the Virgin and the life of Christ. It is regarded as one of the supreme masterpieces of the Early Renaissance. That Giotto painted the Arena Chapel and that he was chosen by the Comune of Florence in 1334 to design the new campanile (bell tower) of the Florence Cathedral are among the few certainties of his biography. Almost every other aspect of it is subject to controversy: his birthdate, his birthplace, his appearance, his apprenticeship, the order in which he created his works, whether or not he painted the famous frescoes at Assisi, and his burial place. Now we turn our attention to a controversial painting. Was the Star of Bethlehem actually a comet? Could it be the same comet as the "Great Comet of 1680"? Could this same comet be the Comet ISON expected to visit Earth in November 2013? The story of the Epiphany, in which a star leads the Magi to come from the east and adore the Christ Child, is told in Matthew 2 and expanded in apocryphal accounts, where the men are said to have descended from the prophet Balaam, whose prophecy of a star in Numbers 24:17 was taken by Christians to refer to the birth of Jesus. The Gospel does not specify how many magi visited, nor does it call them kings. In catacombs paintings the number varies and they wear Phrygian cap. This is commonly explained as a reference to their eastern origin. In classical Greek art, the Phrygian cap could signify that the wearer was non-Greek. The math also does not add up. Christ's birth almost certainly did not occur 2,013 years ago. Our present chronology by which the years are numbered as AD or BC was conceived by the Roman abbot Dionysius Exiguus around 523 A.D. Unfortunately, Dionysius made two significant errors in his calculations. The first was his placement of 1 A.D. immediately following 1 B.C., completely disregarding the mathematically required 0 in between. Back then in Europe, zero was not considered a number. So, for instance, the year we now call 3 B.C., is actually --2 numerically speaking. Second, Dionysius accepted the statement of Clement of Alexandria that Jesus was born in the 28th year of the reign of the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus. But Dionysius failed to realize that during the first four years of his reign this Roman ruler was known by his original name Octavianus, until the Roman senate proclaimed him as "Augustus." So here alone we have an error of four years, but by the time it was realized our chronology was too well entrenched to be changed This painting is a portion of the cycle of frescoes in the Arena Chapel, which is one of Giotto's most renowned works. The scene depicts adorers greeting the baby Jesus, employing Giotto's techniques such as the draping of cloth and the emotion on the faces of the figures in the scene, as well as the use of three-dimensional techniques, helping the viewers place themselves in the scene. One of the most interesting components of this fresco is the Star of Bethelehem in the form of a comet shooting through the sky. It is thought that Giotto was inspired to paint this Star in this form due to a 1301 viewing of Halley's Comet. However, Josephus,Roman historian mentions a Comet over the holy land at this time, and it is known that a bright comet was over the holy land in 5 B.C.E. History is worthless. Thomas