Theological cosmography

Gozzoli's Theological Cosmography is a rare and exceptional subject in Quattrocento Italian painting — a diagrammatic or allegorical image representing the structure of the cosmos according to Christian theological tradition. Such subjects were more typical of illuminated manuscripts, encyclopaedic codices, or church floor mosaics than of easel painting, and Gozzoli's willingness to tackle it reflects both his humanist patrons' intellectual ambitions and the Florentine culture of learned imagery that flourished under Medici patronage. Theological cosmographies typically showed the concentric spheres of the Ptolemaic universe — Earth at the centre, surrounded by the spheres of the Moon, Sun, planets, fixed stars, and finally the Empyrean Heaven — populated by angels and with the deity or Christ at the apex. Such images linked Aristotelian physics to Christian eschatology, providing a complete visual theology of the universe in a single image. Its inclusion in a painted format suggests a sophisticated, probably clerical or humanist, audience.

A cosmographical image requires a circular or concentric compositional structure atypical of narrative or devotional panel painting. Gozzoli would have worked from a conceptual diagram — possibly supplied by a theologian adviser — translating abstract geometrical divisions into painted zones populated by figures and symbols. Gold and deep blue dominate the celestial zones while darker, more earthly tones occupy the lower registers.