Nordic Artist Working In Italy, Last Quarter Of The 16th Century, Adoration Of The Shepherds

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

Adoration of the shepherds

Oil on canvas, cm 117 x 171

The work conforms as a reworking of numerous basaneschi ideas, mediated through the incisorio work of Sadeler and Cornelis Cort. In a wooden hut, the Virgin, whose face exudes a powerful light, shows to a procession of poor shepherds the Child Jesus, under the eyes of Joseph, who turns to Christ a look of love and apprehension. The robes of Our Lady, Joseph and the shepherds have glazed shades, 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 Gospel story, which wants the last in the social hierarchy as first worshippers of the Messiah. In the right section of the composition there is a typical figure in the scenes of Adoration of the shepherds of the flourishing workshop of Bassano, that of the crouching shepherd who blows on a burning charcoal, in the useless effort to revive a flame, now weak in the face of the powerful light of divine revelation. The figure, present, among other paintings, in the wonderful Adoration of Jacopo da Ponte executed in the sixties of the sixteenth century and currently exhibited at the halls of the Roman gallery Corsini, will later have a wide circulation as an autonomous gender scene and will be reproposed in numerous recordings by Sadeler, Thus obtaining a wide diffusion also in Northern Europe and in rudolfino. Deriving from the activity of the workshop of Da Ponte and diffused through the engravings of Sadeler is also the pose of the Virgin with the Child, of great visual impact.