Northern artist active in Italy, last quarter of the 16th century, Adoration of the Shepherds

Nordic artist active in Italy, last quarter of the 16th century

Adoration of the Shepherds

Oil on canvas, 117 x 171 cm

The work is shaped as a reworking of numerous Bassano ideas, mediated through the engraving work of Sadeler and Cornelis Cort. In a small wooden hut, the Virgin, whose face exudes a powerful light, shows the Baby Jesus to a procession of poor shepherds, under the eyes of Joseph, who turns a look of love and apprehension towards Christ. The clothes of the Madonna, Joseph and the shepherds have enamel tones, but the landscape has a nocturnal atmosphere, illuminated only by the halo of light that spreads from the angelic presence responsible for the announcement to the shepherds. What is most striking is the moving humility of the shepherds, in line, moreover, with the spirit of the evangelical story, which wants the last in the social hierarchy to be the first worshippers of the Messiah. In the right section of the composition we find a typical figure in the scenes of the Adoration of the Shepherds of the flourishing Bassano workshop, that of the crouching shepherd blowing on a burning ember, in the futile effort to rekindle a flame, now weak in the face of the powerful light of divine revelation. The figure, present, among other paintings, in the marvelous Adoration by Jacopo da Ponte executed in the 60s and currently exhibited in the rooms of the Roman Corsini gallery, would later have wide diffusion as an autonomous genre scene and would be reproduced in numerous engravings by Sadeler, thus obtaining a vast diffusion also in Northern Europe and in the Rudolphine area. Also deriving from the activity of the Da Ponte workshop and spread through Sadeler's engravings is the pose of the Virgin and Child, of great visual impact. Of particular interest from a compositional point of view is certainly the figure of the shepherd with the hat, often reproduced in various Nordic prints and engravings, first and foremost by Sadeler and Cort. The background also seems to echo the reinterpretation of Bassano's models, with particular reference to the series of Allegories of the Four Seasons in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.