The Nativity

1534

Perino del Vaga

Artist, Italian, 1501 - 1547

Five men and two women gather around an infant in a landscape in this vertical painting. The people all have pale or peachy skin with delicate facial features. Halos, like gold rings, float behind each head. All the men but one have beards, and most of the people’s lips are parted. The pudgy baby, Jesus, lies nude on a white cloth on the grassy ground near the bottom center of the composition. Three people kneel around and look down at him. To our left, a man wearing a fur-lined, powder-blue tunic under a rose-pink robe crosses his arms to touch opposite shoulders. A tall staff with a gold cross at the top rests in one elbow. Just behind Jesus, a woman wearing a gold crown and sage-green and pink robes holds a palm frond in one hand and extends the other over the baby. To our right, Mary wears a gold diadem and an apple-red dress. The cloak billowing behind her shoulders and fluttering to our right is emerald green on one side and silvery blue on the other. She also crosses her hands over her shoulders. Four men stand behind the group. Starting behind Mary, to our right, a man faces our left in profile. He holds a tall staff in one hand and points at Mary with the index finger of the other. The next man looks at the first with his hand held by his own face, the first two fingers splayed over his beard near his mouth. Next, another man looks down at Jesus with his hands together in prayer by the shoulder farther from us. These three men wear robes in canary yellow, burnt orange, dark blue, vivid green, or raspberry pink. The fourth man, along the left edge of the painting, is nude except for a coral-orange and yellow cloth tied around his hips. He has short brown hair and is cleanshaven. The feathered ends of three arrows project from his torso and three more wounds on his neck, shoulder, and thigh trickle blood. He holds an arrow by his side with one hand and reaches out with this other to hold the first two fingers and thumb up over Jesus. A gray stone building rises along the right edge of the composition behind the group. A person wearing a white tunic, red robe, and a straw-colored hat climbs a set of stairs there. That person holds a long staff over one shoulder and carries a lamb by the animal’s four legs in the other. In the sky above the main group, a bearded man a triangular halo over gray hair floats among about a dozen winged, child-like angels on a cloud bank. The man holds up one hand in blessing and holds an orb topped with a cross in the other hand. A bank of winged baby heads clusters in the distance, farther along the cloud bank. A few people, tiny in scale, sit or walk through the landscape, which leads back to ice-blue, craggy mountains. Cream-white and muted blue clouds fill the sky above. The artist signed the work as if he had left an inscribed tablet near Jesus. It reads, “M.D.XXXIIII. PERINO BONAC CORSSI FLORENTIN OPVS FACEBA.” The letters of the artist’s name, PERINO, are then combined into two monograms.

Media Options

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Although called a nativity, this painting lacks the manger, ox, and ass traditionally found in scenes of Christ's birth. It would be better interpreted as a mystical adoration of saints. John the Baptist, Catherine of Alexandria, and the Virgin are in the foreground. From left to right standing behind them are Sebastian, pierced with arrows; the pilgrim James Major; Joseph, the husband of Mary; and the pilgrim Roch. Soaring through the heavens is God the Father accompanied by a phalanx of putti.

Commissioned by a member of the Baciadonne family of Genoa, this large altarpiece is the most important religious painting by Perino del Vaga to survive. Perino had been a pupil of Raphael in Rome, and his indebtedness to his master is evident here in the idealization of the figures and the grace of the postures. Like others of his generation, however, Perino departed from Raphael's serene harmonies to instill in his works a greater degree of tension and artifice. In this altarpiece the studied gestures hang in the air as if to function in the place of speech. Poses seem choreographed and, in several instances, tipped off balance. Rich colors glow phosphorescently with a stained-glass intensity out of the oddly dark morning.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 21


Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on panel transferred to canvas

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 274.4 x 221.1 cm (108 1/16 x 87 1/16 in.)
    framed: 302 x 248.9 x 9.8 cm (118 7/8 x 98 x 3 7/8 in.)

  • Accession

    1961.9.31


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Commissioned by a member of the Baciadonne family for Santa Maria della Consolazione, Genoa, where it remained until the end of the 18th century. Cardinal Joseph Fesch [1763-1839], Paris; (his sale, Palazzo Ricci, Rome, 17 March 1845 and days following, no. 813); purchased by M. George. William Ward, 11th baron Ward [1817-1885, created 1st earl of Dudley in 1860], Witley Court, Worcestershire, England, by 1849;[1] by inheritance to his son, William Humble Ward [1867-1932], 2nd earl of Dudley, Witley Court; (Dudley sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 25 June 1892, no. 91); purchased by Sir John Charles Robinson [1824-1913], London, for Sir Francis Cook, 1st Bt. [1817-1901], Doughty House, Richmond, Surrey;[2] by inheritance to his son, Sir Frederick Lucas Cook, 2nd Bt. [1844-1920], Doughty House; by inheritance to his son, Sir Herbert Frederick Cook, 3rd Bt. [1868-1939], Doughty House; by inheritance to his son, Sir Francis Frederick Maurice Cook, 4th Bt. [1907-1978], Doughty House, and Cothay Manor, Somerset; sold 1947 or 1948 to (Gualtiero Volterra, London) for (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence);[3] sold March 1949 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[4] gift 1961 to NGA.
[1] According to G.F. Waagen, Art Treasures of Great Britain, 1854, II:233. The painting was lent by Dudley to the 1857 Manchester exhibition.
[2] Annotated sales catalogue, copy in NGA curatorial files.
[3] See the copy of a receipt in NGA curatorial files. It is undated, but may be placed in 1947, or at the latest 1948, on the basis of its location in the Cook Collection Archive in care of John Somerville, England. Volterra was Contini Bonacossi's agent in London.
[4] The Kress Foundation made an offer to Contini Bonacossi on 4 March 1949 for a group of twenty-one paintings, including a "Pierin del Vaga Altar Piece;" the offer was accepted on 10 March 1949 (see copies of correspondence in NGA curatorial files, see also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2254).

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1857

  • Art Treasures of the United Kingdom: Paintings by Ancient Masters, Art Treasures Palace, Manchester, 1857, no. 188.

Bibliography

1841

  • Catalogue des tableaux composant la galerie de feu son eminence Cardinal Fesch. Rome, 1841:32

1854

  • Waagen, Gustav Friedrich. Treasures of Art in Great Britain: Being an Account of the Chief Collections of Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Illuminated Mss.. 3 vols. Translated by Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake. London, 1854: 2:233.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 103, repro.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 103.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 91, repro.

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XV-XVI Century. London, 1968: 108-109, fig. 261.

  • Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 1:325. 3:pl.1824.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 262, repro.

1979

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:358-359; 2:pl. 258.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 182, no. 206, color repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 302, repro.

  • Wolk, Linda. "The Pala Baciadonne by Perino del Vaga." Studies in the History of Art 18 (1985):29-57, repro.

1992

  • National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 98, repro.

1997

  • Banzato, Davide, Maria Beltramini, and Davide Gasparatto, eds. Placchette, bronzetti e cristalli incisi dei Musei Civici di Vicenza, secoli XV-XVIII. Vicenza, 1997: 74.

2000

  • Kirsh, Andrea, and Rustin S. Levenson. Seeing Through Paintings: Physical Examination in Art Historical Studies. Materials and Meaning in the Fine Arts 1. New Haven, 2000: 11-13, fig. 8.

2001

  • Wilson, Carolyn C. St. Joseph in Italian Renaissance Society and Art: New Directions and Interpretations. Philadelphia, 2001: 43, 58, 78, 82, 210-211 n. 102, 223 n. 185, 224 n. 194, 228 n. 229, 234 n. 276, pl. 45.

2004

  • Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 93, no. 69, color repro.

2011

  • Pergam, Elizabeth A. The Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857: Entrepreneurs, Connoisseurs and the Public. Farnham and Burlington, 2011: 313.

2013

  • "Vasari and the National Gallery of Art." National Gallery of Art Bulletin 48 (Spring 2013): 16-17, repro.

2014

  • Chiodo, Sonia, and Serena Padovani, eds. The Alana Collection, Newark, Delaware, USA. Vol. III: Italian Paintings from the 14th to 16th Century. Florence, 2014: 216, 218, fig. 30a.

2015

  • Ginzburg, Silvia."Perino del Vaga e la generazione di Salviati." In Antonio Geremicca, ed. Francesco Salviati: "spirito veramente pellegrino ed eletto". Rome, 2015: 43, figs. 5, 8.

Inscriptions

lower center on tablet: .M.D.XXXIIII. / .PERINO BONAC / CORSSI.FLORENTIN / OPVS FACEBA[T] (followed by a double monogram combining the letters of PERINO)

Wikidata ID

Q20176074


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