The enigmatic altarpiece

The magnificent 15th-century Portinari Triptych in Florence is full of religious symbolism, but what particularly intrigues Charles Quest-Ritson is the meaning of the flowers in the foreground

- Charles Quest-Ritson

THERE'S a painting in the Uffizi T Gallery in Florence, Italy, known as the Portinari Triptych. It's a Nativity scene, commissioned from a Flemish artist called Hugo van der Goes in 1475. It was made for Tommaso Portinari, a Florentine who worked for the Medici bank in Bruges.

A triptych comes in three parts and the two outer sections can be folded over to protect the central part. When the Portinari side panels are closed, their backs display scenes that come together as the Annunciation. These are painted en grisaille to represent sculptures-carved stone and wood were more commonly employed at that time for devotional work than paintings. On the right-hand panel, the Archangel Gabriel salutes and blesses Mary; she receives the Holy Spirit, here represented by a dove, in the lefthand panel. The Annunciation is the precursor of the Incarnation, when the panels may be opened out to reveal the Birth of Christ.

The central panel of the triptych shows the new-born Jesus, long and skinny like a real baby, and not in a manger, but lying on the floor and radiating heavenly light. Angels, shepherds and Wise Men crowd around Him in stylised attitudes of devotion. There's a fiercely horned cow, too, and a donkey eating the hay in the manger. It is not a straightforward representation of the Nativity so much as an Adoration by many onlookers-a composite rendering of all the Evangelists' stories of the Child Jesus's first days, brought together into one scene.