We stick them in the post without a thought – but who painted the first Nativity?
Great art comes tumbling through your letterbox at this time of year. Here are the kings from the east laden with gifts, gathering at a stable where an ox and an ass look lovingly at a baby child. Mary sits demurely. Shepherds hearken to an angel. You pop it on the mantelpiece with all the other cards.
Paintings of the nativity, in many styles and by some of the greatest artists ever, aren't just Christmas-card gold – they're frankincense and myrrh, too. The likes of Botticelli and Dürer have turned their imaginations to the scene and its theme, either concentrating just on Mary, Joseph and Jesus in rapt stillness, or gathering crowds of wise kings and servants and camels to create a great human panorama like Leonardo da Vinci's Adoration of the Magi. Christmas would not be Christmas without a couple of these masterpieces half-hidden among the tinsel.
Recently, I started wondering: when was the first Noel in art? Botticelli's Mystic Nativity, a popular choice for Christmas cards that hangs in London's National Gallery, was painted half a millennium ago. But what is the world's oldest nativity scene? Where can you find the grandfather of all Christmas cards?
The first clue is at one of the world's most revered churches: Santa Maria Maggiore, squatting in the middle of a massive crossroads in Rome. In its souvenir shop, the grinning face of Pope Francis is on every mug and calendar. But step inside its long straight hall and you travel back in time: this is a building that dates from the 5th century AD. Some of its art is more than 1,500 years old. High up in the half-light are mosaics of the infancy of Jesus. Is there a nativity up there? I can't see one – but wait, aren't those the Magi, the three Persian astronomer-kings who followed a star to Bethlehem to see the newborn son of God? In this mosaic, bizarrely, they're tarted up in jewels and pointy hats. As for baby Jesus, he greets them sitting on a throne.
When we think of the nativity in art, it is not this. We picture a warm, intimate, human moment. In The Nativity at Night, painted by Geertgen tot Sint Jans in about 1490, a light shining in the darkness illuminates the gentle face of Mary as she contemplates her wondrous child. Is the humble drama we see in this little painting an invention of the Renaissance era when it was created? It seems a long leap from the primitive Magi and godlike Christchild of Santa Maria Maggiore to the delicate humanity of Geertgen tot Sint Jans.
So the simplest answer to my question is disappointing: aspects of the nativity have been depicted ever since there were Christians. But where's the cuteness in these ancient images? Where's that atmosphere of carols being sung in the snow? Stille nacht, heilige nacht ...
A wondrous work of art from dark-ages Germany provides my next crucial clue. The Lorsch Gospels date from the court of Charlemagne at Aachen in about 810AD. The carved ivory cover of this book, now in the V&A, is a masterpiece. It includes a nativity scene that is exactly what I'm looking for. A deeply anthropomorphic, sensitive ox and ass watch over Christ in the stable while Mary rests and an angel calls the shepherds from their flocks. It's a lovely telling of the Christmas story and – although it's by no means the grandfather of all Christmas cards – it leads me east.
The age of Charlemagne saw Europe's first "renaissance", with barbarian warlords trying to imitate the lost grandeur of Rome. They deliberately copied earlier art, and this nativity is based on a similar one found on a bishop's ivory throne in Ravenna, Italy. And that throne was made in the 6th century AD in Byzantium, the eastern half of the Roman empire that lived on after the empire fell.
So it was in Byzantium that sensitive, warm, human images of the nativity first appeared. Like the Magi following that star, this beautiful artistic tradition came from the east and was gratefully received by Europeans who have loved these winter pictures ever since. What a gift. Reported by guardian.co.uk 3 days ago.
Great art comes tumbling through your letterbox at this time of year. Here are the kings from the east laden with gifts, gathering at a stable where an ox and an ass look lovingly at a baby child. Mary sits demurely. Shepherds hearken to an angel. You pop it on the mantelpiece with all the other cards.
Paintings of the nativity, in many styles and by some of the greatest artists ever, aren't just Christmas-card gold – they're frankincense and myrrh, too. The likes of Botticelli and Dürer have turned their imaginations to the scene and its theme, either concentrating just on Mary, Joseph and Jesus in rapt stillness, or gathering crowds of wise kings and servants and camels to create a great human panorama like Leonardo da Vinci's Adoration of the Magi. Christmas would not be Christmas without a couple of these masterpieces half-hidden among the tinsel.
Recently, I started wondering: when was the first Noel in art? Botticelli's Mystic Nativity, a popular choice for Christmas cards that hangs in London's National Gallery, was painted half a millennium ago. But what is the world's oldest nativity scene? Where can you find the grandfather of all Christmas cards?
The first clue is at one of the world's most revered churches: Santa Maria Maggiore, squatting in the middle of a massive crossroads in Rome. In its souvenir shop, the grinning face of Pope Francis is on every mug and calendar. But step inside its long straight hall and you travel back in time: this is a building that dates from the 5th century AD. Some of its art is more than 1,500 years old. High up in the half-light are mosaics of the infancy of Jesus. Is there a nativity up there? I can't see one – but wait, aren't those the Magi, the three Persian astronomer-kings who followed a star to Bethlehem to see the newborn son of God? In this mosaic, bizarrely, they're tarted up in jewels and pointy hats. As for baby Jesus, he greets them sitting on a throne.
When we think of the nativity in art, it is not this. We picture a warm, intimate, human moment. In The Nativity at Night, painted by Geertgen tot Sint Jans in about 1490, a light shining in the darkness illuminates the gentle face of Mary as she contemplates her wondrous child. Is the humble drama we see in this little painting an invention of the Renaissance era when it was created? It seems a long leap from the primitive Magi and godlike Christchild of Santa Maria Maggiore to the delicate humanity of Geertgen tot Sint Jans.
So the simplest answer to my question is disappointing: aspects of the nativity have been depicted ever since there were Christians. But where's the cuteness in these ancient images? Where's that atmosphere of carols being sung in the snow? Stille nacht, heilige nacht ...
A wondrous work of art from dark-ages Germany provides my next crucial clue. The Lorsch Gospels date from the court of Charlemagne at Aachen in about 810AD. The carved ivory cover of this book, now in the V&A, is a masterpiece. It includes a nativity scene that is exactly what I'm looking for. A deeply anthropomorphic, sensitive ox and ass watch over Christ in the stable while Mary rests and an angel calls the shepherds from their flocks. It's a lovely telling of the Christmas story and – although it's by no means the grandfather of all Christmas cards – it leads me east.
The age of Charlemagne saw Europe's first "renaissance", with barbarian warlords trying to imitate the lost grandeur of Rome. They deliberately copied earlier art, and this nativity is based on a similar one found on a bishop's ivory throne in Ravenna, Italy. And that throne was made in the 6th century AD in Byzantium, the eastern half of the Roman empire that lived on after the empire fell.
So it was in Byzantium that sensitive, warm, human images of the nativity first appeared. Like the Magi following that star, this beautiful artistic tradition came from the east and was gratefully received by Europeans who have loved these winter pictures ever since. What a gift. Reported by guardian.co.uk 3 days ago.