Angels Announcing Christ's Birth to the Shepherds

In 1639, when Govert Flinck signed and dated this canvas, he was working in Amsterdam for Hendrick Uylenburgh, who ran a painters' studio and an art business at the same address. The Florentine writer Filippo Baldinucci recorded the picture in a dealer's stock, and the Louvre identifies that dealer as Uylenburgh. The subject is the night of the Nativity from Luke's gospel. The sky splits open, an angel in white appears in a burst of light with small angels tumbling around, and down in the dark the herd scatters while the shepherds kneel and stare. A dog stands its ground in the middle of it all. The painting reached Paris in 1797 by exchange. The museum gave nine Flemish pictures seized from nobles who had fled the Revolution to Louis-Bernard Coclers, a painter and picture trader from Liège, and took this one in return.