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At the base of a steep, grassy hill, five shepherds kneel, sit, and recline around and among two cows, several sheep, a goat, and a dog in the lower half of this painting, while a winged angel appears in a golden shaft of light in the upper half of this vertical painting. All the people have pale skin. One brown cow spans most of the composition along the bottom, its head facing our left. In the lower left corner, closest to us, a man smoking a long pipe reclines against a tangerine-orange cloth. He wears a round, brimmed cap, a loose white shirt, tattered gray, knee-length pants, and gray cloth wrapped around his shins above bare feet. He leans on his right elbow and crosses his ankles, as he looks to our right in profile. Next to him, to our right, a woman kneels with her body angled away from us to our right. She bends over, perhaps to milk the cow in front of her with the pail sitting next to her, and she looks back to our left. Her chestnut-brown hair is pulled up and braided or coiled. Her rose-pink dress and the white blouse under it fall off her right shoulder. A slate-gray cloak or scarf wraps around her waist and we see the bottom of one bare foot. On the opposite side of the cow, near its head, a young boy angled to our right, with straight brown hair falling down to his eyebrows, looks down at the animal. Most of his face is in shadow but light catches the tip of his nose and the front of one cheek. To our right, along the edge of the painting, behind the rump of the cow and among the shadows, another young boy is seen from the chest up. He wears with a wide-brimmed, brown hat and reaches his right arm across his body as he looks to our left, toward the streak of light. The head of a second cow stands behind him, only the head visible. The steep, grassy hill rises sharply behind this group and cows.The fifth person leans into the scene from our left, above the reclining man on the orange cloth. He has short brown hair and beard, and a slightly hooked nose. Wearing a rose-pink garment, he looks up at the angel with his right hand shielding his face. A tree trunk rises along the left edge of the painting beyond that man. A dog, sheep, and a goat are tucked in and around the cows. Golden light pours down onto the man in pink from past the angel in the bank of clouds above. Against a night sky with navy-blue clouds, gold and white rays emanate from the parted clouds beyond the angel. Kneeling on a dark, fern-green cloud, the angel leans forward and down, and points down at the shepherd wearing pink with one hand and up with the other. The angel has silvery-gray wings and wears a gray robe. Blond curls lift as if in a breeze. In the landscape below, topaz and aquamarine-blue forms could be mountains or surging waves.

Jacopo Bassano

The Annunciation to the Shepherds, probably 1555/1560

West Building, Main Floor - Gallery 23

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 106.1 x 82.6 cm (41 3/4 x 32 1/2 in.)

framed: 131 x 106.7 x 10.6 cm (51 9/16 x 42 x 4 3/16 in.)

Credit Line

Samuel H. Kress Collection

Accession Number

1939.1.126

Artists / Makers

Jacopo Bassano (artist) Venetian, c. 1510 - 1592

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Provenance

Probably Thomas Duncombe [d. 1799], Duncombe Park, Yorkshire, England; probably by inheritance to his brother, Charles Slingsby Duncombe [d. 1803], Duncombe Park; probably by inheritance to Charles Duncombe, 1st baron Feversham [d. 1841]; probably by inheritance to William Duncombe, 2nd baron Feversham [d. 1867], Duncombe Park; probably by inheritance to William Ernest Duncombe [d. 1915], 1st earl of Feversham, Duncombe Park, until at least 1880. Sir Charles A. Turner, London, 1892; (his sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 16 March 1908, no. 7); purchased by (Thos. Agnew & Sons, London); sold two days later to (Charles Fairfax Murray [1849-1919], London and Florence). (sale, Sotheby's, London, 19 July 1922, no. 101); possibly purchased by Christie. (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence and Rome); sold 1933 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundaton, New York[1]; gift 1939 to NGA.

[1] See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2065.

Associated Names

Agnew & Sons, Ltd., Thomas
Christie, Manson & Woods, Ltd.
Contini Bonacossi, Alessandro, Count
Duncombe, 1st Baron Feversham, Charles
Duncombe, 1st Earl Feversham, William Ernest
Duncombe, 2nd Baron Feversham, William
Duncombe, Charles Slingsby
Duncombe, Thomas
Kress Foundation, Samuel H.
Murray, Charles Fairfax
Sotheby's
Turner, Charles, Sir

Exhibition History

1932: An Exhibition of Italian Paintings Lent by Mr. Samuel H. Kress of New York to Museums, Colleges, and Art Associations, travelling exhibition, 24 venues, 1932-1935, mostly unnumbered catalogues, p. 51, repro. (not shown at all venues).

1938: Exhibition of Venetian Painting From the Fifteenth Century through the Eighteenth Century, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1938, no. 4, repro.

1938: Religious Art, an exhibition of fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth-century paintings; sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, metalwork, rosaries, textiles, stained glass and prints, Baltimore Museum of Art, 1938-1939, no. 14, repro.

1940: Four Centuries of Venetian Paintings, Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, 1940, no. 2, repro.

1992: Jacapo Bassano, c. 1510-1592, Museo Civico, Bassano del Grappa, Italy; Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 1992-1993, no. 30, repro.

1996: Obras Maestras de la National Gallery of Art de Washington, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, 1996-1997, unnumbered catalogue, 36-37, color repro.

Bibliography

1941: Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 17, no. 237.

1942: Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 244, repro. 65.

1945: Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 127, repro.

1959: Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 211, repro.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 10.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 3, repro.

1972: Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, MA, 1972: 19, 645.

1973: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XVI-XVIII Century. London, 1973: 45-46, fig. 83.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 18, repro.

1979: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:31-32; 2:pl. 19, 19A.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 219, no. 268, color repro.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 37, repro.