The Nativity

Entry

Christ’s Nativity, with Mary, Joseph and three angels, is set in an improvised stable beside a ruin. The painter followed the account of the event given by St Bridget of Sweden in her Revelationes of c. 1370. According to that text, when Mary felt the moment nearing she took off her cloak and veil, knelt down and began to pray. While praying with her hands raised, the Child was born suddenly, surrounded by a radiance so bright that it made the flame of Joseph’s candle invisible.⁴ The candle is missing in the Rijksmuseum painting, but with that exception the subject is treated in a similar way by Robert Campin and frequently by Hans Memling, often combined with the scene of The Adoration of the Shepherds.⁵ The present painting shows Mary’s husband Joseph in prayer. Contrary to the visual tradition, in which he is depicted as an older man, here he is depicted as young and beardless. That was probably why Heublin took this to be a portrait of the donor, although he gave no reasons for doing so.⁶ This seems unlikely, since the man has no personalised features. The annunciation to the shepherds is taking place in a field in the background.⁷

The Amsterdam painting may have been part of a larger ensemble that also contained an Annunciation, now in Glasgow, and a Presentation in Minneapolis fig. a, fig. b). This is suggested by the fact that they are all the same size and are in a very similar style. Friedländer attributed all three to the Master of the Brunswick Diptych in 1927.

The Amsterdam Nativity may be based on one by the Master of the Legend of St Catherine in Brussels, which must originally have been part of a dispersed triptych with The Adoration of the Magi on the centre panel, four scenes of The Annunciation, The Nativity, The Presentation in the Temple and a lost scene from the life of the Virgin on the wings, and The Virgin and Child and St John the Evangelist in grisaille on the outer wings.⁸ The Annunciation, The Adoration of the Magi, and The Presentation from that triptych are based on Rogier van der Weyden’s St Columba Altarpiece in Munich.⁹

Snyder and Châtelet suggested that the three small panels by the Master of the Brunswick Diptych (together with a lost Adoration of the Shepherds) may originally have been the wings of The Adoration of the Magi (SK-A-2150), which is attributed to Geertgen tot Sint Jans here.¹⁰ Although it is conceivable that, analogous to the triptych by the Master of the Legend of St Catherine, the three panels were once the wings of a triptych with The Adoration of the Magi, it is difficult to associate them in style and technique with The Adoration attributed to Geertgen, and there is no technical or dendrochronological evidence that the four panels were once part of the same ensemble.

Infrared reflectography has shown that the underdrawing of the Rijksmuseum Nativity was made in two stages. The first is fairly sketchy in what appears to be a dry medium, and broadly defines the landscape (fig. c), the figures and the buildings, and was followed by a more detailed drawing, probably done with the brush (fig. d). This combination of two types of underdrawing is also found in The Presentation in the Temple in Minneapolis.¹¹ Another point of similarity between the two panels is the flatly applied blue brocade pattern in the Virgin’s gown and the use of mordant gilding for the haloes. Most of the Christ Child’s halo has been painted out in the Amsterdam Nativity.

Although this small panel lacks the pictorial refinement of the Brunswick diptych, as do the other two from the same ensemble, there are enough points of correspondence in the types of figure and face, the architecture and the landscape to warrant an attribution to the same hand. Infrared reflectography revealed a fairly vigorous brushed underdrawing in the Brunswick diptych which is comparable to the brush drawing on the Amsterdam panel and the one in Minneapolis.¹² Although the plain and simple style of the panels have more in common with the early work of Geertgen tot Sint Jans of around 1480,¹³ the reconstructed triptych by the Master of the Legend of St Catherine is dated around 1500.¹⁴ One therefore wonders whether that triptych was the model for the painter of our ensemble. Unfortunately, the dendrochronological dating of the panel is too early to provide any clues as to the date when the panels were painted.

(J.P. Filedt Kok)