Nativity at Night (Geertgen tot Sint Jans)
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Early Netherlandish painting
Early Netherlandish painting refers to the work of artists active in the Low Countries during the 15th- and early 16th-century Northern renaissance, especially in the flourishing Burgundian cities of Bruges and Ghent...
of about 1490 by Geertgen tot Sint Jans
Geertgen tot Sint Jans
Geertgen tot Sint Jans , also known as Geertgen van Haarlem, Gerrit van Haarlem, Gerrit Gerritsz, Gheertgen, Geerrit, Gheerrit, or any other diminutive form of Gerald, was an Early Netherlandish painter from the northern Low Countries in the Holy Roman Empire...
in the National Gallery, London
National Gallery, London
The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...
(NG 4081). It is a panel painting
Panel painting
A panel painting is a painting made on a flat panel made of wood, either a single piece, or a number of pieces joined together. Until canvas became the more popular support medium in the 16th century, it was the normal form of support for a painting not on a wall or vellum, which was used for...
in oil
Oil painting
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil—especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their body...
on oak
Oak
An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus , of which about 600 species exist. "Oak" may also appear in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus...
, measuring 34 x 25.3 cm., though it has been cut down in size on all four sides. The painting shows the Nativity of Jesus
Nativity of Jesus in art
The Nativity of Jesus has been a major subject of Christian art since the 4th century. The artistic depictions of the Nativity or birth of Jesus, celebrated at Christmas, are based on the narratives in the Bible, in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and further elaborated by written, oral and...
, attended by angels, and with the Annunciation to the shepherds
Annunciation to the shepherds
The Annunciation to the shepherds is an episode in the Nativity of Jesus described in the Bible in Luke 2, in which angels tell a group of shepherds about the birth of Jesus...
on the hillside behind seen through the window in the centre of the painting. It is a small painting presumably made for private devotional use, and Geertgen's version, with significant changes, of a lost work by Hugo van der Goes
Hugo van der Goes
Hugo van der Goes was a Flemish painter. He was, along with Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling and Gerard David, one of the most important of the Early Netherlandish painters.-Biography:...
of about 1470.
Like many paintings of the Nativity, the depiction is influenced by the visions of Saint Bridget of Sweden (1303-1373), a very popular mystic. Shortly before her death, she described a vision of the infant Jesus as lying on the ground, and emitting light himself:
...the virgin knelt down with great veneration in an attitude of prayer, and her back was turned to the manger.... And while she was standing thus in prayer, I saw the child in her womb move and suddenly in a moment she gave birth to her son, from whom radiated such an ineffable light and splendour, that the sun was not comparable to it, nor did the candle that St. Joseph had put there, give any light at all, the divine light totally annihilating the material light of the candle.... I saw the glorious infant lying on the ground naked and shining. His body was pure from any kind of soil and impurity. Then I heard also the singing of the angels, which was of miraculous sweetness and great beauty...
Many depictions reduced other light sources in the scene to emphasize this effect, and the Nativity remained very commonly treated with chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro in art is "an Italian term which literally means 'light-dark'. In paintings the description refers to clear tonal contrasts which are often used to suggest the volume and modelling of the subjects depicted"....
through to the Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
. Here the sources of light are the infant Jesus himself, in accordance with Bridget's vision, who is the sole source of illumination for the main scene inside the stable, the shepherds' fire on the hill behind, and the angel who appears to them. In fact this effect now goes beyond what was intended by the artist, as the painting was damaged in a fire in 1904, when it was in a private collection in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
. The different shades of blue given the upper and lower parts of the Virgin's clothing and the sky outside now appear as murky dark browns or blacks, and the painting is generally darker. The painting had been cut down by 1901. There is a copy of the painting in the Diocesan Museum in Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
, which suggests that the original size was about 45 x 31 cm. In this the rays emanating from the Christ-Child are more evident, and the animals behind less so.
The Geertgen painting reverses (makes a mirror-image of) the main figures of the earlier work presumed to have been by van der Goes, which is now lost but known from several versions. Only the main figures are reversed, and not the background of the building and the shepherds' scene outside. Apart from the reversal, there were other differences: in the van der Goes four angels knelt round the manger, and a larger group hovered near the top of the picture-space; the window had a sill higher than the Virgin's head; and Saint Joseph
Saint Joseph
Saint Joseph is a figure in the Gospels, the husband of the Virgin Mary and the earthly father of Jesus Christ ....
held a lighted candle in his hands. The composition showed a view generally pulled back, without the intimate close-up effect of Geertgen's version, which has the figures pushed closely together. The closest to the original is thought to be a version in the church in Annaberg
Annaberg-Buchholz
Annaberg-Buchholz is a town in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, in the Erzgebirge, capital of the district Erzgebirgskreis.The town is located in the Ore Mountains, at the side of the Pöhlberg . It has three Protestant churches, among them that of St...
in Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
(illustrated in Campbell), which the version by Michael Sittow
Michael Sittow
Michael Sittow, also known as Master Michiel, Michel Sittow, Michiel, Miguel and many other variants was a painter from Reval who was trained in the tradition of Early Netherlandish painting...
in the Kunsthistorisches Museum
Kunsthistorisches Museum
The Kunsthistorisches Museum is an art museum in Vienna, Austria. Housed in its festive palatial building on Ringstraße, it is crowned with an octagonal dome...
in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
(illustrated) resembles closely, apart from the shaping of the top edge. Though the architectural details vary, both the Annaberg and Sittow paintings show rather grander buildings, in a better state of repair, than Geertgen, whose building has a sloping timber roof. In Early Netherlandish painting the usual simple shed of the Nativity, little changed from Late Antiquity, often developed into an elaborate ruined temple, initially Romanesque
Romanesque architecture
Romanesque architecture is an architectural style of Medieval Europe characterised by semi-circular arches. There is no consensus for the beginning date of the Romanesque architecture, with proposals ranging from the 6th to the 10th century. It developed in the 12th century into the Gothic style,...
in style, which represented the dilapidated state of the Old Covenant
Covenant (biblical)
A biblical covenant is an agreement found in the Bible between God and His people in which God makes specific promises and demands. It is the customary word used to translate the Hebrew word berith. It it is used in the Tanakh 286 times . All Abrahamic religions consider the Biblical covenant...
of the Jewish law.
Geertgen has simplified van der Goes' composition to a "bold design based on grid-like patterns", which the effects of the fire on the colour values has further simplified. The van der Goes original "was a more complex, more ambitious and more solemn, but perhaps a less touching, picture." The Geertgen is a famous painting, that has received much critical attention, not all of which has taken into account the earlier van der Goes work and the effects of the fire and cutting-down. The statement by Erwin Panofsky
Erwin Panofsky
Erwin Panofsky was a German art historian, whose academic career was pursued mostly in the U.S. after the rise of the Nazi regime. Panofsky's work remains highly influential in the modern academic study of iconography...
that the Geertgen was "the earliest nocturne in the optically strict sense of the word" is described in the National Gallery catalogue as a "rash claim". Quite apart from the van der Goes, night scenes had essentially been developed in illuminated manuscript
Illuminated manuscript
An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations...
s before moving to panel paintings, and the realistic night vision
Night vision
Night vision is the ability to see in low light conditions. Whether by biological or technological means, night vision is made possible by a combination of two approaches: sufficient spectral range, and sufficient intensity range...
effect of very muted colour values and "simplification of volumes" owes as much to the later fire as the artist's intention. James Snyder, perhaps unaware the painting had been cut down, compares the "fractional figures" on the sides of the painting to those in Geertgen's Man of Sorrows
Man of Sorrows
Among the passages in the Hebrew Bible that have been identified by Christians as prefigurations of the Messiah, the Man of Sorrows of Isaiah 53 is paramount - the various theological traditions are discussed at that article...
, and says they "bring the viewer into the picture, allowing him to look over their shoulders". In the Barcelona version the figure of the extreme left-hand angel is still cut off by the frame.
Geertgen worked in Haarlem
Haarlem
Haarlem is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland, the northern half of Holland, which at one time was the most powerful of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic...
, and was the leading Netherlandish painter of his day who both came from and worked in the Northern Netherlands (approximately the modern Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
), rather than Flanders
Flanders
Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...
(mostly now in Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
). Various attempts have been made to relate his style, in this and other works, to much later Dutch painting
Dutch art
Dutch art describes the history of visual arts in the Netherlands, after the United Provinces separated from Flanders. Earlier painting in the area is covered in Early Netherlandish painting and Renaissance art.-Golden Age:...
, for example by Max Jakob Friedländer
Max Jakob Friedländer
Max Jakob Friedländer was a German art expert and art historian . He attained the rank and title of "Geheimrat" under the German Empire....
, but "nationalistic allegations that Geertgen was quintessentially 'Dutch'" are rejected by Lorne Campbell.