Natividade

Lorenzo Lotto painted this small Nativity in 1523 for someone to keep at home and pray in front of, not for a church wall. He does something quietly startling with it. On the wall behind Joseph he hangs a little crucifix, an object that could not possibly exist on the night Christ was born, so the newborn lies watched over by an image of his own death. The scene is set at night, the figures lit close and warm around the bare infant, with three small angels overhead. Lotto signed and dated it clearly, and later reworked the left side himself. He spent much of his life moving from town to town for commissions, and pictures this size went with a family from room to room.