Follower of Jacopo Tintoretto, 'The Nativity', about 1590

Mary and Joseph kneel in love and wonder before the baby Jesus, who sleeps wrapped in a woven basket of sticks and straw. Joseph, the elderly carpenter, touches his rough fingers together in prayer. He holds a stick like those from which the basket is made, and two knives in a sheath lie in his lap. Mary presses her hands over her heart. The stick Joseph holds may be a reference to the rod that miraculously blossomed to reveal him as the man chosen to marry Mary. The painter has included carefully observed naturalistic detail such as the dots of grey lichen on the sticks and the wrinkles on Joseph’s hands.

The stable is made of rough thatch over crude timber supports and the baby’s blanket is ragged and patched. Perhaps Joseph cut the sticks with his knife and wove the simple wicker basket himself. A long swaddling cloth with a cord tie, in which the baby will be tightly bound, has been hung up to dry. The fresh cuts on the sticks are perilously sharp for a baby’s bed and, together with the knives and shroud-like swaddling cloth, hint at the pain of Christ’s Passion that lies ahead. The painting is based on an earlier version (private collection) attributed to Jacopo Tintoretto, which includes Joseph’s woven rush tool basket of hammers and a bag of nails, also reminding us of Christ’s Passion.

It is uncertain who painted this picture. The approach to the subject – the emphasis on straw, rush and wicker – reflects the influence of Jacopo Tintoretto, as does the way it is painted, not only in the decisive brushstrokes of the crib and the thatched roof, but also the loops of creamy paint which emphasise the looseness of the skin on Joseph’s hands. However, there is nothing here of Jacopo’s often dramatic treatment of space and lighting, as seen in Christ Washing the Feet of the Disciples, which was also imitated by his son Domenico.

The emphasis on the poverty of the setting and the rustic appearance of the figures can be seen in paintings by both Tintoretto and Jacopo Bassano. Their choice of this humble style reflects the new focus on poverty in the Counter-Reformation Catholic Church. Mary’s face is similar in type to Bassano’s women. She has high eyebrows, large lowered eyelids with lashes hinted at by flicks of the brush in the shadows below, and an exaggerated Cupid’s bow lip. Her white head-covering also resembles that of Bassano’s Virgin in The Way to Calvary. Whoever painted this picture clearly knew and admired the work of both Tintoretto and Bassano and probably painted it in the last decade of the sixteenth century.

The surface of the painting was flattened during lining before it joined the Gallery. The blue of the Virgin’s cloak has darkened, and the green around Joseph’s collar and in the landscape may have done so too.