The Adoration of the Shepherds

In 1611 Cardinal Girolamo Bernerio gave this canvas to Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the pope's nephew, who was then assembling one of the great picture collections of Rome. By 1650 a guidebook listed it among six works by Bassano in the Borghese villa by the Porta Pinciana. The painting dates from 1553 or 1554. In the 1890s it was demoted to an anonymous follower, and one scholar suspected a 17th-century copy. The critic Roberto Longhi, and then Aldo de Rinaldis in 1948, restored it to Bassano, where it has stayed. The scene runs along one diagonal. On the left the Virgin lifts a white cloth to show the Child, and on the right a shepherd in a straw hat sits with his staff among sheep, an ox and a donkey. In the lower corner a white dog lies curled up asleep.