The Adoration of the Shepherds by Georges de La Tour

The Adoration of the Shepherds by Georges de La Tour

A circle of faces

The Christ Child lies tightly swaddled in a basket, and around him a ring of faces emerges out of the dark: Mary with her hands joined, Joseph shading a candle, and shepherds — one bringing a lamb, another an old man leaning on his staff. The light falls on the faces and nowhere else, and the circle of heads closes around the infant like a wreath.

Stillness and geometry

As in all La Tour’s night scenes, the forms are simplified almost to geometry: smooth oval faces, rounded shoulders, plain cloth. The palette is warm reds and browns against black. The effect is devotional silence — the shepherds do not kneel or exclaim; they simply look.

In the Louvre

The painting was acquired by the Louvre in 1926, soon after La Tour’s rediscovery, and helped establish him as one of the most original painters of seventeenth-century France.

Where it hangs

The canvas is in the Louvre and measures 107 by 131 centimetres.

About this print

Made from a 3,000-pixel photograph of the original, enough to print sharply at up to about 20 inches on its longest side.

Sources: Musée du Louvre, Paris · Wikidata Q9402747 · Wikimedia Commons