Sagrada Família (Natividade)

Lorenzo Costa painted this small Nativity around 1490, in the courtly world of Ferrara and Bologna where he worked. It is really an Adoration: the Virgin does not cradle the newborn but kneels before him with her hands crossed on her chest, worshipping her own child. That gesture had spread across fifteenth-century Italy after the recorded visions of Saint Bridget of Sweden, who described Mary kneeling to the infant on the bare ground. Joseph stands aside, old and tired in yellow, leaning on his staff. Off to one side is a monk in a black Augustinian habit marked with a small sun, which identifies him as Nicholas of Tolentino, so the picture was almost certainly made for that religious order. Lyon's museum has owned it since 1892.