The Story of Christmas: The Nativity

Federico Barrocci - The Nativity - 1597. Oil on canvas - Height: 134 cm; Width: 105 cm - The Prado, Milan (click photo for larger image) Of all the many thousands of nativity scenes in western art, the one featured here is among the most tenderly maternal. Mary kneels humbly before her God, but she is equally full of love for her newborn baby. Mother and child gaze into each other’s eyes and the whole composition emphasizes their mutual bond.

Federico Barrocci (1535-1612) was an Italian Renaissance painter and printmaker. His original name was Federico Fiori, and he was nicknamed “Il Baroccio”. His work was highly esteemed and influential, and foreshadows the Baroque artistry of Peter Paul Rubens. He worked first with his father, and was then apprenticed to the painter Battista Franco in Urbino. In 1548 he went off to Rome, where he worked in the famous studio of the day, that of the Mannerist painters, Taddeo Zuccari and Federico Zuccari.

Borrocci was welcomed by Pope Pius IV to aid the beautification of the Vatican Belvedere Palace at Rome, where he painted the Virgin Mary and Child, with several Saints and a ceiling in fresco, representing the Annunciation.

The art of Barrocci, until recently one of the most overlooked of Italian masters, was especially popular with women in his lifetime and it is not hard to see why from this nativity, in which the radiant child illuminates the exquisitely loving face of Mary.