The Adoration of the Shepherds

Jacob Jordaens painted this in Antwerp in 1617, when he was in his mid-twenties, and he pulls the whole scene up to the front edge of the panel. The shepherds crowd in close, a young man in red leaning on his staff, a figure in a straw hat and an old woman in a headscarf behind him, and two more men pressing in on the other side. Mary sits among them with the sleeping child wrapped in white against her chest. The Mauritshuis describes the effect as putting us in the front row. High in one corner, faint heads of angels show in the clouds. In the foreground a brass jug catches the light, and on its handle Jordaens signed his initials. Before 1905 the panel belonged to Prince Lichnowsky in Silesia, and it came to The Hague in 1959.