Anbetung der Hirten

El Greco painted this nocturnal nativity in Toledo around 1600, and he lit it in an unusual way. There is no lantern or fire in the stable. The only light comes from the newborn Christ himself, glowing on the straw and throwing the faces of the shepherds into sharp relief as they lean in out of the dark. Their bodies are stretched and their gestures exaggerated, the manner that made him famous and, to some later eyes, strange. The panel was once part of a set of three. Its companions were an Annunciation, now in Bilbao, and a Baptism of Christ, which still hangs beside this picture today in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome.