Nativity (Adoration of the Christ Child)

Older pictures of the Nativity often showed Mary lying in bed, resting after the birth. By around 1420, when this panel was painted in Vienna, she was more often shown kneeling before her son in prayer, a type that spread partly through the visions of Bridget of Sweden, who described the Virgin kneeling to worship her newborn. Here Mary crosses her arms over her blue gown and looks down at the Child, swaddled in white with red bands and laid in a wicker manger. Two angels with red wings kneel close by, and the ox and the ass push their heads over the woven fence. Behind it the old Joseph stands beside a young shepherd whose hand lets a horn hang down. In the top corner, fine rays scored into the gold stand for the star.