Nativity and Annunciation to the Shepherds

This is a night picture, still a fairly new thing for a Venetian painter around 1517. The whole scene sits in darkness. On the left, far in the background, an angel breaks over a group of shepherds, and they wake dazzled, as if a burst of daylight had been let into the middle of the night. Closer to us, two women in pale clothing stand out sharply against the black meadow. The stable is really the shell of a grand ancient ruin, its old stonework still dignified as it falls apart, pressed into service as a makeshift shelter over the newborn child. Setting the Nativity inside a crumbling antique building was a familiar idea in these years: the proud architecture of the old world quietly giving way to what is being born in its rubble. Previtali keeps the mood calm and rural, and the only strong light in the picture comes from the sky on the left, where the angel appears to the shepherds.