They are, of course, the holiest and the most important persons in the painting. The angels carry olive branches, which two of them have presented to the men they embrace in the foreground. These men, as well as the presumed shepherds in their short hooded garments on the right and the long-gowned Magi on the left, are all crowned with olive, an emblem of peace. As angels and men move ever closer, from right to left, to embrace, little devils scatter into holes in the ground. Above the stable roof the sky has opened to reveal the golden light of paradise.
Golden crowns hang down from the dancing angels' olive branches.
The missing words may have been 'him burying himself'. Like the end of the millennium in the year 1000, the end of the half millennium in 1500 also seemed to many people to herald the Second Coming of Christ, prophesied in Revelation. At a time when Florentine painters were recreating nature with their brush, Botticelli freely acknowledged the artificiality of art. In the pagan Venus and Mars he turned his back on naturalism in order to express ideal beauty. Web Gallery of Art, created by Emil Kren and Daniel Marx .