The Nativity

Fra Filippo Lippi and Workshop

National Gallery of Art

A woman kneels in front of a baby under a stone structure to the right as a man sits and dozes in front of a landscape to the left in this wide, horizontal painting. All three people have pale, peachy skin with rosy cheeks and gold, flat, disk-like halos. To our right, the woman’s head and shoulders are covered with a white cloth as she crosses her hands across her chest. She wears a rose-pink dress under a voluminous, sky-blue robe lined with spruce green. The robe puddles on the floor behind her feet, and one section has been pulled forward to be used as a blanket for the baby. The child has blond hair and round cheeks, and is swaddled in white under the robe. He is propped up against stacked rolls of hay. A room-like space with pale pink stone walls stretches back beyond the woman. The wall to the left is pierced with an arched opening. A trough lines that wall on the woman’s side of the opening, and another is perpendicular to it, just beyond the baby. An ox pokes its head through the opening, and an ass looks across the second trough. To our left, the man sits with at least one knee pulled up. He has long blond hair, a white beard, and wears a sapphire-blue tunic and red robe. He leans one elbow on his bent knee and rests his head in that hand, his eyes closed. A staff with a sack tied to the end rests against his other shoulder. He sits on a flat, green area at the foot of sheer-cut, green, rocky hills. More hills, trees, and a path lead back into the distance to towns along the horizon. The upper and lower edges of the panel are painted with pale pink similar to the building, making it seem that we look through a partial frame at the scene.