The Nativity
25 artworks found
The Gospels give the Nativity a few sentences and almost no staging. Nearly everything a painting shows — the ox and ass, the ruined architecture, the kneeling mother, the shepherds arriving first — comes from elsewhere, and each addition was an argument.
Adoration of the Magi by Diego Velázquez - Framed Canvas
By: Diego Velázquez
Adoration of the Magi by Filippino Lippi - Framed Canvas
By: Filippino Lippi
Adoration of the Magi by Pedro Núñez del Valle - Framed Canvas
By: Pedro Núñez del Valle
Adoration of the Magi by Juan Bautista Maíno - Framed Canvas
By: Juan Bautista Maíno
Adoration of the Magi by Lorenzo Monaco - Framed Canvas
By: Lorenzo Monaco
Adoration of the Shepherds by Sebastiano Conca - Framed Canvas
By: Sebastiano Conca
Adoration of the Shepherds by Francisco Rizi - Framed Canvas
By: Francisco Rizi
Adoration of the Shepherds by Juan Bautista Maíno - Framed Canvas
By: Juan Bautista Maíno
Adoration of the Shepherds by Gerrit van Honthorst - Framed Canvas
By: Gerrit van Honthorst
Adoration of the Shepherds by Jacob Jordaens - Framed Canvas
By: Jacob Jordaens
The Adoration of the Shepherds by Corrado Giaquinto - Framed Canvas
By: Corrado Giaquinto
Adoration of the Shepherds by Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo - Framed Canvas
By: Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo
Angels Announcing the Birth of Christ to the Shepherds by Govert Flinck - Framed Canvas
By: Govert Flinck
Adoration of the Shepherds by Abraham Bloemaert - Framed Canvas
By: Abraham Bloemaert
Adoration of the Kings by Michael Damaskinos - Framed Canvas
By: Michael Damaskinos
Adoration of the Shepherds by Hugo van der Goes - Framed Canvas
By: Hugo van der Goes
Adoration of the Shepherds by Domenichino - Framed Canvas
By: Domenichino
Adoration of the Kings (Monforte Altarpiece) by Hugo van der Goes - Framed Canvas
By: Hugo van der Goes
Nativity at Night by Geertgen tot Sint Jans - Framed Canvas
By: Geertgen tot Sint Jans
The Adoration of the Magi by Abraham Bloemaert - Framed Canvas
By: Abraham Bloemaert
The Nativity by Fra Diamante - Framed Canvas
By: Fra Diamante
The Nativity by John Singleton Copley - Matte Canvas
By: John Singleton Copley
The Nativity by Federico Barocci - Matte Canvas
By: Federico Barocci
The Nativity of Christ by Albrecht Altdorfer - Framed Canvas
By: Albrecht Altdorfer
The Massacre of the Innocents by François-Joseph Navez - Framed Canvas
By: François-Joseph Navez
What a Nativity actually shows
The ox and the ass are not in Luke. They arrive from a line in Isaiah, read as prophecy, and became so fixed that their absence from a Nativity is itself a statement. The ruined classical building that so often shelters the scene is likewise deliberate: the old order collapsing at the moment the new begins, an idea painters found irresistible and repeated for three hundred years.
The light is the real subject of most Nativities. Once painters accepted that the child himself was the source of the light — rather than a lamp, or the sun, or the conventional gold — the whole composition reorganised around it. Geertgen tot Sint Jans and Correggio built entire pictures on the premise, and the night Nativity became one of the great occasions for painters to show what they could do with darkness.
The Adoration of the Magi is a separate subject and usually a much noisier picture. Where the Nativity is quiet and enclosed, the Adoration is a procession — horses, retinues, exotic dress, gold — and painters used it as their licence to paint worldly splendour arriving and then kneeling. The contrast between the two scenes is the point, and churches often hung them where both could be seen.