L'Adoration des bergers

Georges de La Tour painted this hushed nativity in the 1640s in Lorraine, a duchy in eastern France that was then being wrecked by the Thirty Years' War, with armies, famine and plague passing through again and again. Almost nothing of that turmoil shows here. Five figures lean in around a newborn, lit by one candle that Joseph shields with his hand, so the flame itself is hidden and the light seems to come off the child. La Tour built his reputation on these silent night scenes, stripped of any extra incident, the faces smoothed to near-simple shapes. At the right a woman holds out what looks like a covered earthenware dish, and every figure is completely still.