Lying on a white cloth on the bare ground.
Bible in art · Luke
The Adoration of the Shepherds
Giorgione · 1505/1510
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Painted in Venice around 1505–1510 and long known as the “Allendale Nativity”, after the English family who owned it. Who painted it was debated for years — some gave it to the young Titian — and the museum gives it to Giorgione.
Half the picture is landscape: a river, a town with a square tower, blue mountains under an evening sky. At the right, at the mouth of a dark rock cave, Mary and Joseph kneel by the child, and two shepherds have just arrived.
From the text
- Shepherds coming in haste (Luke 2:16)
- Mary, Joseph and the baby (Luke 2:16)
- Lying in a manger (Luke 2:12, 16)
The artist’s own
- A cave in a rock face — a tradition, not in Luke
- The ox and the donkey, a tradition of Christmas art
- A Venetian landscape with a hilltop town
Details
The child
Two shepherds
One stands with his staff, the other kneels; a hat lies on the ground.
In the dark
The heads of an ox and a donkey inside the cave.
A town
A walled town with a square tower in the landscape.
Giorgione, Venetian, 1477/1478–1510. National Gallery of Art, Washington (Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.289) · Oil on panel · NGA Open Access: "Images of these works are available free of charge for any use, commercial or non-commercial, under Creative Commons Zero (CC0)." (NGA open data: published_images.csv openaccess = 1)