The Adoration of the Shepherds

Murillo made this in Seville in the 1660s, a city still hollowed out by the plague of 1649, which had killed something close to half its people within months. His answer, again and again, was warmth: holy scenes filled with real Sevillian faces, gentle and approachable rather than austere. Here shepherds crowd in to see the newborn Christ, one of them bringing a trussed lamb, an ordinary working man's gift that also points to the child's future as the sacrificial lamb. The light falls softly on the group, the faces are those of Murillo's neighbours, and nothing is made grand. It was his second surviving attempt at the subject, and it later entered the collection that became London's Wallace Collection, where it hangs now.