Nativity

Only Matthew and Luke describe Christ's nativity. It was perhaps their brevity and absence of detail that led the Middle Ages to devote so much industry to amplifying it. Matthew (2:1–12) tells of the wise men and their gifts, Luke (2:1–20) of the infant laid in the manger and of the shepherds, led by an angel, who came to worship. By the end of the Middle Ages legend had transformed the wise men from priests into kings accompanied by their retinues, the ox and ass had appeared in the stable, the shepherds were bearing their own humble gifts and the Virgin herself knelt in adoration.

  1. Setting. Matthew tells of the wise men following the star and simply entering the house. Luke says that Mary laid the infant "in a manger because there was no room for them to lodge in the house". Mention of the cave is made first in the early apocryphal Book of James. "And he found a cave there and brought her into it... And behold a bright cloud overshadowing the cave... The cloud withdrew itself out of the cave and a great light appeared in the cave so that our eyes could not endure it. And by little and little that light withdrew itself until the young child appeared: and it went and took the breast of its mother Mary." The apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (8th century) is the first to mention the ox and ass. "An angel made her dismount and enter a dark sea which began to shine... On the third day Mary left the cave and went to stable and put the child in the manger, and the ox and the ass adored him." is often a night scene, as it should be. The building is usually dilapidated, symbol of the Old Dispensation which had beer, superseded by the birth of the Redeemer.
  2. Adoration of the Virgin. The image of the Virgin kneeling in adoration follows the account by St Bridget of Sweden who visited Bethlehem in 1370 at wrote in her Revelations of her vision of the Virgin. "When her time came she took off her shoes and her white cloak and undid her veil, letting her golden hair fall on her shoulders. Then she made ready the swaddling clothes which she p down beside her. When all was ready she bent her knees and began to pray While she was thus praying with hands raised the child was suddenly born surrounded by a light so bright that it completely eclipsed Joseph's feeble candle This devotional treatment sometimes forms the basis of a Sacra Conversazione with attendant saints and perhaps donors.
  3. The two midwives. The eastern Church had a different tradition of the Nativity. Byzantine artists showed an actual confinement with the Virgin reclining on a bed and two midwives in attendance, one of them washing the infant The apocryphal Book of James relates that one of the midwives, Mary Salome denied that Mary could have given birth and still remain a virgin intact, at examined her for proof. Her arm shriveled on touching Mary, but was made whole again when she picked up the child. This theme, which is also found western art, disappeared altogether after its condemnation by the Council Trent in the mid-16th century.
  4. The Virgin standing. Another account was given in the 14th century by Pseudo-Bonaventura (Giovanni de Caulibus) in his Meditations. "The Virgin arose in the night and leaned against a pillar. Joseph brought into the stable bundle of hay which he threw down and the Son of God, issuing from the, mother's belly without causing her pain, was projected instantly on to the hay at the Virgin's feet." The pillar sometimes features in the structure of the stall and a sheaf of hay or straw lies on the ground.

James Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, New York: Harper & Row, rev. ed. 1979