Die Anbetung der Hirten mit einem Stifter

Palma Vecchio painted this Nativity in Venice around 1520, when he, Titian and Giorgione were all working in the same city and often in strikingly similar styles. That closeness later caused trouble. The kneeling donor at the right, whoever paid for the picture, has never been identified, and by the 1600s the painting was passing through French hands under Titian's more famous name. A Paris painter who owned it as a supposed Titian sold it to Louis XIV in 1685, and it hung at Versailles until the Revolution swept the royal collection into what became the Louvre. Only later did scholars give it back to Palma. The ox in its stable and the shepherds crowding in from the fields still hold the warm, unhurried light of Venetian painting.