The Le Nain Brothers, 'The Adoration of the Shepherds', about 1640

A group gathers around a manger to adore the newborn Christ. On the right, the Virgin Mary and Joseph gaze reverently at the infant, alongside two small angels. On the left are two young boys and an old, barefooted man: they are the shepherds mentioned in the Gospel of Luke (2: 8–20). The boy wearing a hat and one of the angels appear to have seen or heard something outside the painting, possibly the arrival of the Three Kings.

The scene takes place in the ruins of a classical building rather than in the stable described in the Bible. Such ruins were often used in depictions of the Nativity to symbolise the decline of the old pagan world with the rise of Christianity. The chipped marble of the columns and the vines growing over the stone heighten the sense of the buildings’ disrepair. The arch both protects the figures and leads the eye towards a distant building and a delicately painted rural landscape.

The artist has employed a sumptuous palette, contrasting the bold red of the Virgin’s dress with the delicate pink and green hues of the angels’ robes. The humble setting is amplified by the bare ground and the ruins’ pale, earthy tones. Strong shadows in the foreground draw our attention towards the bright, radiant light falling on the Christ Child, as well as to his delicate halo. Further contrasts are found between the beautiful, idealised Virgin and the more naturalistic shepherd, whose tattered clothes and dirty, wrinkled feet remind us of his poverty. This naturalism became extremely popular in the early seventeenth century through the works of Caravaggio; the idea to silhouette the donkey against the wall to the right may have its origins in the work of Orazio Gentileschi, a follower of Caravaggio who worked in Paris. A major pentimento is visible just above the wings of the angel in green where the Virgin’s head was originally painted in an earlier version of the composition.

A painting of this size would have been made for private devotion in someone’s home, not for a church. It combines refined elegance with carefully observed naturalistic detail: compare, for example, the beautiful, idealised Virgin with the older shepherd’s tattered clothes and dirty, wrinkled feet. Although we aren’t sure which of the three Le Nain brothers – Antoine, Louis and Mathieu – painted the picture, the complexity of the subject and the scale of the composition make it one of the greatest produced by them.