Nativity and Annunciation to the Shepherds

Luke's Gospel tells the Christmas story in two places at once. In Bethlehem the child is born and laid down, and in the fields nearby an angel appears to shepherds and tells them where to find him. Luini put both on one wall. Below, in a rough timber shed, Mary and Joseph kneel with their hands joined. Up to the right, through a gap in the boards, the second scene plays out on a green hillside. The angel arrives in a glow of gold, and one shepherd has dropped to the ground, leaning back on his arm and staring up at it.

The child is not in a manger. He lies on a cloth on the bare ground, sucking his fingers, which is how many painters of the time showed him after the visions of Saint Bridget of Sweden, a 14th-century mystic who described Mary kneeling to adore her son the moment he was born. Two small angels are with him, and one holds a little wooden cross, an early hint of how the story will end. The ox and the ass push their heads in from the left.

Its companion from the same oratory near Milan, an Adoration of the Magi of exactly the same size, hangs in the same room of the Louvre.