The Nativity

This painting of the Nativity is the central panel of Romanino’s high altarpiece for S. Alessandro in Brescia. The church of S. Alessandro belonged to the Servite Order, who were otherwise known as the Order of Servants of Our Lady. The church was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, mother of God, so she has a prominent position in this altarpiece.The high altar was the responsibility of the Confraternity of Corpus Christi – a lay brotherhood which venerated the body of Christ – so the depiction of Christ before and after death is of central importance in this altarpiece, which would have been placed directly above the tabernacle in which the Eucharist was kept. There would originally have been a crowning panel above the Nativity showing the dead Christ supported by the Virgin and Saint John.Mary and Joseph kneel in adoration before the infant Christ. He lies naked on a cloth-covered basket in the stable where he was born. They are watched by the ox and donkey traditionally included in scenes of the Nativity, and by a throng of rejoicing baby angels who cavort in the clouds in the upper part of the panel. Two of them hold an inscribed scroll, suggesting the annunciation of Christ’s birth to the shepherds, who appear lying on the ground in the middle distance among their sheep.Much of the paint in the clouds was applied with fingers and palm, the impressions of which are clearly visible. Many features of the landscape in the Nativity are painted wet in wet and the impasto (thickly applied paint) in many areas shows Romanino to have been a bold experimenter with oil paint.The blue of the Saint Joseph’s robe and the Virgin’s mantle has darkened due to the deterioration of the pigment smalt. Her mantle is embroidered with widely spaced ornaments in gold thread, incorporating a central fleur-de-lis. The fleur-de-lis is the symbol of Saint Alexander, after whom the church was named because his relics were kept there. Although embroidered mantles like this appear in fourteenth-century paintings and may have been worn then as part of fashionable dress, by the sixteenth century they were usually only worn as part of ecclesiastical dress. Several of Romanino’s works, both altarpieces and smaller paintings, depict the Virgin wearing an embroidered mantle of this type. They can also be found in the work of other painters of the period, for example the mantle embroidered with strawberry plants worn by the Virgin in Lorenzo di Sanseverino’s altarpiece The Marriage of Saint Catherine of Siena.An altarpiece of the Adoration of the Shepherds attributed to Francesco Prata in S. Michele a Bedulita, north east of Bergamo, repeats the holy family, the animals and four of the angels from Romanino’s central Nativity panel. It is likely that Prata made tracings or measured drawings of Romanino’s work. He may have made the copy at the insistence of a patron, which suggests the high esteem in which Romanino’s altarpiece was held. Prata’s Adoration is not dated but another Nativity by Callisto Piazza, also derived from Romanino’s composition, is inscribed 1524.