The Nativity

This is the earliest dated painting in Basel's group of works by Baldung, a Nativity finished around 1510. It is a large panel, more than a metre and a half tall, painted on fir, and the museum notes that Baldung's workshop had a hand in it. He was about 25 at the time and already busy enough to share out the work on a commission this size. The scene holds to the ordinary furniture of a German Nativity, the Virgin and the newborn Child, Joseph nearby, and the broken-down stable that stood for the shelter at Bethlehem. Painted on fir rather than the oak favoured further north, it is a panel made from the wood of the upper Rhine, where Baldung spent almost his whole working life.