The Adoration of the Shepherds

In 1612, when Bloemaert signed and dated this altarpiece, 's-Hertogenbosch in Brabant was still a Catholic city under the Spanish crown, and the Twelve Years' Truce had just halted the war between Spain and the rebel Dutch provinces. The canvas, almost three metres high, was made for the high altar of the church of the Poor Clares there. Bloemaert's younger sister Barbara had been a nun in that convent since Christmas 1606, and he may have given the painting in her honour. Angels fill the upper half, as in Luke's gospel, where a whole host of them appears to the shepherds, and below, the shepherds press in around the Child.

In 1629 the Dutch took the city, and Catholic worship was pushed out of its churches. The nuns eventually moved to a house of their order at Mechelen and took the altarpiece with them. Then, in 1646, the painter of church interiors Pieter Saenredam set this very picture on the high altar of the cathedral of 's-Hertogenbosch, by then a Protestant church, in a view of its interior. It had never stood there. Saenredam's painting is now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington.