The subject of the Adoration of the Shepherds was extremely
popular among painters during the Renaissance, and continued to be so in later
centuries. During an age when very few ordinary people could read or write, and
in Catholic Europe the services were conducted in Latin, there was a ready
market for images that could involve lay people in their religion, and many
Bible scenes were painted for display in churches.
The scene portrayed as the Adoration of the Shepherds
concerns the passage in St Luke’s Gospel, Chapter 2, in which an unspecified
number of shepherds are bidden by an angel to visit Bethlehem and see the
Christ child in the manger. Very few details of the scene are provided by Luke,
other than that the child would be found “wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying
in a manger”. This therefore gave the artists plenty of scope for imagination
in their portrayal of the scene.
St Matthew tells a different story, namely of “wise men from
the east” who pay homage at the house in Bethlehem where Mary and Joseph are
living, without any mention of mangers. This event has given rise to a separate
strand of Nativity paintings, known as the Adoration of the Magi, in which
gifts are presented in quite a formal manner. The “Shepherds” paintings tend to
be far more intimate, due to the much lower rung on the social ladder occupied
by its subjects.
Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco, known as Giorgione (c.
1477-1510) was a Venetian painter who was a pupil of Bellini and a teacher of
Titian. His “Adoration” (assumed to date from 1510) shows the holy family
receiving the shepherds at the mouth of a dark cave, the main source of light
being that shining from the child on the ground on to the faces of Mary and
Joseph. Mary is shown dressed in a
resplendent blue and red gown, and the shepherds also seem to be remarkably
well-dressed. The background is a typically bucolic scene that owes far more to
Italy than Palestine. The message of new light being brought into the world is
unmistakable and is one that the painting’s original viewers would have
recognised instantly. The painting is
housed in the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.
Antonio Allegri da Correggio (1489-1534) completed his
“Adoration” in 1530. It is an interesting mixture of intimacy and formality, in
that Mary is shown holding the child in her arms and smiling down at him, while
at the same time the “heavenly host” hover in a cloud above the shepherds, one
of whom is female. Another notable feature of this painting is that the light
shining from the child lights up the faces of the shepherds and Mary, but not
that of Joseph, who is a background figure barely distinguishable from the
animals of the stable. The painting can be seen at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden,
Germany.
Nearly a century
later, the Dutch painter Gerrit van Honthorst also used light to great effect
in his 1622 “Adoration”. Honthorst had travelled to Italy and been greatly
inspired by the use of chiaroscuro (contrasting light and dark) in the works of
Caravaggio. In his painting the light emanating from the somewhat large baby
illuminates the faces of all the onlookers but throws everything else into
shadow. The faces are delicately portrayed in soft hues and one feels the
essential humanity of the scene. There is real wonder and adoration here, in a
most attractive painting, which can be seen at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum,
Cologne, Germany.
There is an “Adoration” at the National Gallery, London,
that was once believed to be by the Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn. It depicts
a softly lit scene inside a large barn, the beams of which stretch away into
the darkness. The domesticity of the scene of the holy family is enhanced by
the fact that some of the shepherds have brought their families with them, and
the viewer can make out a young child being held up to get a better view of the
Christ child, and a young boy with his dog. The painting is now reckoned to
date from 1646 and to be by an unknown pupil of Rembrandt’s who would have been
working in the master’s studio at the same time that Rembrandt was painting his
own “Adoration” that can now be seen at the Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
There are many more depictions of the Adoration of the Shepherds
to be seen in galleries across the world, notable examples being by Mantegna,
Ghirlandaio, Reni (see illustration above), Poussin and El Greco. An atmosphere of peace and serenity is
conveyed by virtually all of them, as well as the sensation that the shepherds
represent ordinary, down-to-earth people being brought face to face with a
momentous event.
© John Welford
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