Ludovico Mazzolino, 'The Nativity with a Shepherd', about 1506-7

In this early work by Mazzolino, the Virgin Mary kneels in adoration of the newborn Christ, who reclines on a white cloth over a pillow of straw on which he rests his elbow. The stable behind them is improvised from an ancient Roman building, represented only by a pier decorated with elegant ornament in low relief and by a parapet on which the slumbering Saint Joseph leans.

The ox and the donkey are in a lean-to addition to the stable with an arched opening closed by a gate. The ox appears to be drinking from a water trough although this area of the painting is now quite dark. Water flows under an arched stone bridge upon which a shepherd stands. The house in the distance may be the inn that had no room for the holy family when they were looking for somewhere to stay. It has very bizarre triangular balconies projecting from it.

The fact that Christ raises his left hand rather than his right in blessing is unusual. Mazzolino often repeated figures from other compositions, sometimes in reverse. The figure of Christ may have been reversed from another painting. Mazzolino painted various versions of this subject, often as here, with only one shepherd rather than the usual two or three that are usually included in pictures of the Adoration of the Shepherds.

Mazzolino’s Nativity with a Shepherd in the Borghese Gallery, Rome, is especially close to this painting, although the scene is set outside a cave, the composition is reversed and the figure of Saint Joseph stands behind the Virgin. The features of the three main figures are similar, as is the landscape with deep green trees, slender brown ones and blue hills in the distance. The pose and drapery of the Virgin Mary are quite different. The repetition and variation in Mazzolino’s Nativities suggests the practice of compiling pictures out of a pattern book: major elements are repeated but in different permutations and sometimes in reverse, so that the compositions are never exactly the same. Mazzolino worked like this for decades, which explains why his paintings so frequently seem to be quirky, improvised assemblies of a set of motifs rather than coherent compositions.

Many features of the painting are typical of Mazzolino, especially the shepherd’s awkward pose, the pinched features below his bulging forehead and his looped drapery. The influence of prints from northern Europe is especially strong in this painting, most obviously in the brittle angular folds of the Virgin’s mantle, which may be explained as a response to the German artist Dürer’s visit to Ferrara in 1506.