基督诞生

Petrus Christus worked in Bruges around 1450, when the city was one of the richest trading ports in Europe and its painters were prized for describing the visible world down to the last thread. He put that skill to a heavier purpose here. At first this looks like an ordinary Nativity, Mary and Joseph kneeling over the newborn child in a broken shed. But the whole scene is framed by a stone archway, and standing on the two pillars are Adam and Eve, with the story of their fall carved in grisaille across the arch above. So the birth is shown as the answer to that first sin, the beginning of a chain that ends at the Cross. Look past the figures and the town in the distance is a tidy Flemish one, except for two domed roofs that stand in for Jerusalem, where the same child would later die.