Geertgen tot Sint Jans
NG 4081 
The Nativity at Night

Lorne Campbell, 1998

Extracted from:
Lorne Campbell, The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Schools (London: National Gallery Publications and Yale University Press, 1998).

Oil on oak panel, 34 × 25.3 cm (cut on all four sides)

Provenance

The painting was bought in Paris in about 1900 by the Berlin collector Richard von Kaufmann ( c. 1850–1908);¹ it was inherited by his widow. Lot 106 in the von Kaufmann sale at Berlin (Cassirer) on 4 December 1917 and the following days, it passed into the collection of Michiel Onnes (1878–1972) at the castle of Nijenrode at Breukelen, north west of Utrecht. It was lot 6 in the Nijenrode sale at Amsterdam (Muller) on 10 July 1923,² later belonged to the ironfounder Hans Tietje in Amsterdam³ and was purchased through Cassirer in 1925.

Exhibitions

‘Noord‐Nederlandsche schilder‐ en beeldhouwkunst vóór 1575’, Gebouw voor Kunsten en Wetenschappen, Utrecht 1913 (26); ‘Middeleeuwse kunstder Noordelijke Nederlanden’, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1958 (21).

Copy

A full‐size copy (panel, 45 × 31 cm), evidently made before the original was cut down, is in the Museo Diocesano at Barcelona and comes from the Monastery of Pedralbes there (fig. 3).⁴

Versions

NG 4081 is itself a version of a lost Nativity believed to have been painted by Hugo van der Goes and known from many copies and variants. See pp. 237–8 below.

Technical Notes

Cut to its present size by 1901, the picture was restored after being damaged in a fire in 1904.⁵ In 1958 the varnish was thinned in places. Exposure to extreme heat may have caused the paint to bubble and this may account for many tiny, round losses, for example across the Virgin’s forehead. There are small flake losses at the lower left corner and on the left edge, in and behind the flying angel (fig. 2). Certain areas have been damaged by abrasion, for example the rays around the Child, and some glazes may have been lost, for instance on the wings of the flying angel. Retouchings are particularly obtrusive in the head of the angel on the extreme left and it is possible that some areas of the background have been misleadingly restored. The surface is covered with thick layers of varnish which have cracked in crazed patterns and which impede visibility, especially in the darker areas. The relationships of tone and colour have become much falsified: the Virgin, for example, wears a blue dress and a darker blue mantle which now look black and which have lost their modelling; the sky too is blue but appears blackish and the details of the interior have so much darkened that they are difficult to distinguish.

The support is one board of oak, vertical in grain and 10 mm thick at the centre of the lower edge. Strips of unpainted wood, also vertical in grain, have been fixed to all four sides. The lateral and top edges of the back of the original panel are bevelled; the bevel on the right of the reverse is older than the other two and may be original. Along the right side of the reverse are traces of slight worm damage. On the reverse are the numbers 92, 40(8?) and 9.

There is a chalk ground. The condition of the picture makes examination with infra‐red difficult but some underdrawing, apparently in a dry material, is present and is particularly clear in the foremost angel (fig. 1). No unusual pigments have been detected. It has not been possible to take samples for medium analysis.

Lines in the Virgin’s face and veil and in the foremost angel suggest that the composition is drawn in fine, sketchy lines which are followed with great care in the painting. The right sleeve of the foremost angel, however, has been reduced in area. The Child’s eyes may have been indicated in higher positions and his underdrawn right foot is more upright. The background appears to have been underpainted in brown and no reserves were left for the angel, shepherds and sheep, which are painted directly on top of the blue sky and landscape. A few changes were made during the course of painting: the upper lip and mouth of the angel in profile have been extended across the manger; the water‐bottle and basket are painted on top of the wall and beams; and a diagonal beam was moved to our right when the basket was included. In some places the paint is applied boldly and thickly, for example in the sky and in the manger; in others it is very thin. A sgraffito technique is used to model the rocks in the background below the shepherds. Reddish lines define many of the contours in the faces and hands of the Virgin, the Child and the angels.

Reconstruction

The extent to which NG 4081 has been cut may be estimated by taking into account the evidence of the bevels at the back and by comparing the Barcelona copy (fig. 3). It is on the same scale, follows faithfully what remains of NG 4081 and completes the composition on all four sides. It is most unlikely that the copyist saw NG 4081 after it had been cut and invented additions; it is far more probable that he made an accurate, full‐size copy before the original was cut down. The halo which he gave to the Virgin and the pattern on her mantle are clearly embellishments in the Spanish taste. There are, however, traces of gold on the Virgin’s robes in NG 4081. The possibility must be raised that NG 4081 was taken to Spain and there decorated with gilding; that the Barcelona copy reproduces the original so adorned; and that all but a few traces of the gilded embellishments were subsequently removed from the original.

If NG 4081 was the same size as the Barcelona copy, it would have measured about 45 × 31 cm. Only a narrow strip has been lost on the left, where the bevel at the back may mark the beginning of the original bevelled edge. The other original bevels would have been lost when broader strips were cut from the other three sides. All the figures would have been virtually complete; more of the roof of the stable would have been seen; a sheaf of corn would have been placed diagonally across the foreground; and Joseph’s left hand would have been visible, together with the near side of the doorway in which he stands.

Description and Iconography

Christ was believed to have been born in a stable. The Virgin ‘laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them at the inn’. It was night when the angel of the Lord came to tell the shepherds of Christ’s birth ‘and the glory of the Lord shone round about them’.⁶

The Virgin has grey eyes and golden‐brown hair which falls in long, heavy tresses, one of which, made denser by retouching, conceals the neck of the ass. Her mouth seems to be slightly open. She wears a white veil with goffered edges, a blue dress with wide, turned‐back cuffs and a darker blue mantle lined with still darker blue. A fold of her dress overlaps the manger and she is kneeling, the train of her mantle sweeping around the lower corner of the manger. This is made of reddish‐brown stone(?). The naked Child lies on straw(?) and emanates orange‐yellow rays, once very much more apparent. In front of the manger are stems of corn from the sheaf which has been cut away. Saint Joseph, standing in a doorway, has dark brown hair and wears a blackish cape and a dull red robe. On the left are five angels. One is in flight, his wings reddish, his robe greyish. The kneeling angel at the back has greenish wings and a purplish robe; the next two are dressed in purplish grey and one has a reddish wing, the other blue wings. The foremost angel wears a brownish robe and his wings are green and blue on the outsides, yellow on the insides. Behind the manger are the ox and the ass, the latter with a band tied round its nose. The huge heads of the animals were perhaps less obtrusive before the Child’s radiance became less clearly visible. The stable has a broken wall of brownish brick; its timber roof rests on a wooden frame and the decaying planks of the gable have been retouched so that some of them look misleadingly like thatching. Suspended from the roof in the top right corner is a wicker basket covered with a white cloth. In the Barcelona copy, the basket is piled with something dark in colour but not otherwise distinguishable. Below, on a shelf built into the brick wall, in an area which may be retouched, is what seems to be a round water‐bottle. A second sheaf of corn is propped in the corner.

In the night sky an angel clothed in white and radiating light appears to the shepherds. On the horizon, behind a fire, stand four shepherds dressed in brown. Between them and the angel another shepherd kneels in prayer; he is accompanied by his dog. Nearer the Virgin are three more shepherds. The first, on the left, dressed in a brown cloak, white skirt and blue hose, holds a crook; the second, in the middle, wears a black hat, red cape, white hose and black boots and shields his eyes with his right hand; the third, dressed in blue, kneels and raises his right hand to greet(?) the angel.

The principal source of light is the Child but the shepherds’ fire and the angel appearing to them provide secondary sources. The two sheaves of corn may refer to Bethlehem, [page 237] which means ‘House of Bread’; here, as in the Portinari Triptych and other paintings, the juxtaposition of Christ’s body and the sheaf of corn alludes to the Eucharist.⁷

Attribution

Ever since it was first published in 1901, NG 4081 has been attributed to Geertgen.⁸ Only Davies and Baldass have expressed serious reservations about this attribution.⁹ The Virgin may be compared with the Virgin in the Vienna Lamentation; Saint Joseph is so similar to the Berlin Saint John the Baptist that the two heads may well depend on the same drawing;¹⁰ the foremost angel resembles Salome in the Vienna Burning of the Bones of the Baptist and, still more closely, the angel to our left of Christ in the Utrecht Man of Sorrows. The heads and hands of the two angels may again depend on the same drawings. Admittedly in NG 4081 the heads of the ox and ass are not particularly well drawn: but the dogs in the Vienna panels and the lamb in the Berlin Baptist demonstrate that Geertgen was not one of the great animal painters. The ox and ass in the left wing of his triptych of the Adoration of the Kings (Prague), though they are seen from different angles, are remarkably like their counterparts in NG 4081, with many of the same idiosyncrasies of drawing. Finally the relatively free technique of painting and the use of reddish lines to define contours in the flesh areas are typical of Geertgen and are found, for example, in the Vienna panels, in the Louvre Raising of Lazarus and in the Utrecht Man of Sorrows.

As Winkler observed, the composition of NG 4081 is taken in reverse from a lost Nativity known from many versions and considered to have been painted by Hugo van der Goes.¹¹ Among the most faithful versions appear to be two pictures in Vienna, attributed respectively to Sittow and to David,¹² and a small painting (25 × 16 cm) in the church of St Anne at Annaberg south of Chemnitz (fig. 4).¹³ The Annaberg version, attributed by Winkler to Sittow, seems to reflect most accurately the lost original, though in all three pictures the copyists have abandoned Hugo’s characteristic facial types. They may be more closely imitated in what are otherwise less careful versions, such as the Adoration of the Shepherds in the Grimani Breviary (fol. 43v) and a wing panel attributed to ‘Ysenbrandt’ formerly in the Marienkirche at Lübeck.¹⁴ In the miniature a sheaf of corn lies diagonally across the foreground and is so reminiscent of the Portinari Triptych that it may echo part of the lost original suppressed in the other versions but maintained by Geertgen. The lost Nativity is reckoned to have been painted during the earlier years of Hugo’s career but probably after another lost Nativity at Night of which NG 2159 is a partial copy.¹⁵ Just as Hugo returned to the [page 238] theme of the Portinari Triptych in his Berlin Adoration of the Shepherds, so he appears to have elaborated his ideas in two Nativities by night.

Geertgen has reversed Hugo’s figures, but not their setting. The Annunciation to the Shepherds remains in the upper left sector. Hugo’s Virgin evidently wore her mantle over her head and her hands were separated, whereas Geertgen’s Virgin has a white veil and joins her hands in prayer in a difficult pose involving the abrupt foreshortening of her right arm. Her hands and arms are very similar to those of the Virgin in the Portinari Triptych. In Hugo’s lost Nativity, Saint Joseph held a candle in his left hand and shielded its flame with his right hand; Geertgen’s Joseph does not hold a candle but lays his right hand to his heart. Geertgen has posed the Child differently, has placed greater emphasis on the ox and ass and has increased their scale. Hugo had shown the foremost angel in back view, with his left wing daringly foreshortened, while Geertgen has moved him away from the Child, turned him into profile and shown his praying hands. The other kneeling angels differ from those in Hugo’s lost composition but resemble those in his Portinari Triptych. Geertgen has taken only the second of the flying angels from Hugo’s Nativity and has brought him down to hover over the four kneeling angels. He has made the Virgin look small and vulnerable by increasing the size of the animals’ heads and he has focused attention more directly on the Child by raising the Virgin’s eyelids, retracting her arms and hands and changing Joseph’s pose so that he inclines further towards the Child. The heads of the Child and Joseph are equidistant from the Virgin’s head and mark a bold diagonal across the picture. As in the van der Goes, Joseph is vertical and the Child is horizontal; the Virgin leans so that the axis of her body makes an angle of about 45° between Joseph and Christ. Hugo’s Virgin leans at an angle of about 60° to the horizontal in a more complex geometrical design.

The idea of the night scene lit by the divine light of the Child and the angel in the sky and by the earthly light of the shepherds’ fire was not Geertgen’s own but Hugo’s, who included another light source in Joseph’s candle. Here as on other occasions Geertgen follows some of the most startling innovations of van der Goes.¹⁶

Date

Art historians have tended to claim that NG 4081 is one of Geertgen’s last works.¹⁷ Because none of his pictures is precisely datable and because the period of his activity cannot be exactly defined, it is difficult to suggest a date for NG 4081. It appears, however, to relate most closely to paintings normally assigned to the later years of his short career: the Berlin Baptist, the Utrecht Man of Sorrows and the Prague triptych of the Adoration of the Kings. There the clothes of the donor and the young men in the background of the centre panel are as the fashions of about 1490.¹⁸ NG 4081 was possibly painted in about 1490, though it was based on pictures painted by van der Goes in the 1470s.

NG 4081 is a small painting probably made for private devotional use. The Barcelona copy is almost certainly Spanish and, though its date has not been accurately established, it is unlikely to have been painted after 1600. The original may have been taken to Spain by one of its first owners; alternatively it may have been removed from Haarlem after the town fell to Spanish troops in 1573.

The rash claim has been advanced that NG 4081 is ‘the earliest nocturne in the optically strict sense of the term’.¹⁹ Comparisons with paintings by Honthorst and Rembrandt have been made to support nationalistic allegations that Geertgen was quintessentially ‘Dutch’. The condition of the picture has been misjudged and the fact that it has been cut down and that it is a variation on a theme by van der Goes has been largely ignored. It was once a more colourful, as well as a larger, painting and the effects of light and shadow were subtler and less schematic. Some of its charm, as well as its superficial resemblance to the work of Georges de la Tour, is due to its state of preservation rather than to its painter’s intentions. Simplifying the ideas of van der Goes, Geertgen has produced a bold design based on grid‐like patterns and has stylised his figures and animals, including the sheep in the background, so that they take the forms of basic geometric solids. The figures are, nevertheless, fragile and vulnerable. The shepherds in the background quail before the enormous angel, appearing in a glory of light that enhances their stature by making them cast extremely long shadows. The Virgin, precariously posed and very much smaller than the ox and the ass, and the little angels in the foreground, with their expressions of child‐like concentration, are protected from the gloom by the divine radiance of the helpless Infant. The lost van der Goes was a more complex, more ambitious and more solemn, but perhaps a less touching, picture.

General References

Friedländer , vol. V, no. 1; Davies 1968, pp. 57–8.

Notes