Nativity and Annunciation to the Shepherds
Bernardino Luini (c. 1480-1532) · 16th century (c. 1520-1525)
In a stable of rough timber, Mary kneels with her hands joined in prayer, wrapped in a blue mantle lined with green, before the newborn child who lies on a white cloth at the lower left, tended by two small angels. Joseph stands at the right in a yellow cloak, his hands folded, and the ox and the ass look on from the shadow at the left. Above the beam, an angel in gold kneels in adoration, and through the opening at the upper right another angel appears in a burst of light to shepherds on a hillside with their flock. The colours are soft and luminous, the Virgin's face tender and rounded in the manner of Leonardo.
Bernardino Luini painted the fresco in the early sixteenth century for a religious building in Lombardy. Around 1810, at the request of the Milanese nobleman Antonio Maria Litta Arese, it was detached with its companions and installed in the Palazzo Litta in Milan; the Litta heirs later sold the group, and the Louvre acquired this scene with the Adoration of the Magi and the Blessing Christ beside it in the eighteen-sixties.
Did You Know? The angel announcing the birth to the shepherds appears twice, once in the sky and once in the stable loft.
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