Giorgione – The Adoration of the Shepherds

Giorgione, The Adoration of the Shepherds, c. 1505, oil on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Advent approaches (it’s the advent of advent) as I write this piece, so thoughts inevitably turn to Christmas and the subject of The Nativity. The barrage of ‘seasonally themed’ product advertising that we all endure at this time of year is the kind of onslaught which can easily distract us from the significance of Christ’s birth, even for non-practising Christians. The images of the Bethlehem setting are also very familiar today, appearing on greetings cards, in church tableaux and in infant school plays; a ubiquity that became commonplace in Renaissance art before becoming so hackneyed for us now. However, my favourite of the Venetian school of artists, Giorgione, brought something different to his depiction and includes a few elements which are mysterious and even challenging to our preconceptions about the biblical narrative. I have chosen The Adoration of the Shepherds to write about rather than his arguably more familiar and certainly more figure-crowded Adoration of the Magi,

Giorgione, Adoration of the Magi (c.1506), oil on canvas, National Gallery, London

because of its apparent simplicity. And yet such plainness is deceptive and masks a sophistication and complexity in its details that is easily overlooked.

The first and most obvious thing of note is that this is a daytime scene. The two shepherds shown looking down at the baby Jesus are not currently tending their flock by night, as Luke’s gospel related. Although cloudy, the sky shown at top left is bright, and lightest near the horizon suggestive of a setting sun, this is not the cozy, hallowed and magical nighttime postpartum moment that Correggio envisaged for example, with its dramatic contrast between chiaroscuro depths and radiant candlelight. Giorgione eschews

Antonio da Correggio, The Nativity, c.1529, oil on canvas, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

the enchantment that inheres such a scene and prefers to emphasise the humble even primitive ordinariness of the location. Secondly, this child was not born in stable, but in a cave containing two tethered cattle, and the painting shows us the baby having been brought forth from the relative security of inside and not lying in a manger. Nor is he wrapped in swaddling clothes but, somewhat alarmingly, has been laid on the stony ground, exposed and vulnerable with just a small white cloth for comfort.

The clothing of the four principal figures is also noteworthy. A white bearded Joseph (certainly appearing too old to have been capable of fathering the child and thus giving credence to the idea of Mary as blessed Virgin), his head covered by a white coif, appears avuncularly chubby, and the self-effacing piety of his humble pose with head down and hands joined together in prayer is somewhat undercut by the richness of the silken gold cape that drapes from his shoulders. A kneeling and solicitously head-inclined Mary meanwhile is shown, as had become conventional in paintings ever since the Byzantine fifth century, wearing expensive blue, the ultramarine colour signifying her future status as queen of heaven and underlying her transcendence and her mediation between the earth and paradise. The foot of this mantle trails underneath the newborn and simultaneously represents her divine connection to him as well as her ne plus ultra maternalism and care. The purple of her inner robe by contrast, symbolises her humanity and her love and might also foreshadow the blood sacrifice she would later witness at her son’s crucifixion.

The shepherds’ clothing is clearly more ragged. The kneeling and penitentially shaven-headed figure closest to us wears an outer garment of Franciscan brown and a demeaning hole appears in his hose. His sleeve is torn and his hat, cast aside as a gesture of reverence, characterises his obeisance before the Holy Family. However, the subtle colour harmony between the green, turquoise and browns of his garments, however tattered they may be, is suggestive of a sartorial awareness on the part of the artist that belies the lowliness of the sheep-tending role. Scholars have suggested that the shepherds may have been modelled on Giorgione’s patrons and the standing figure, however similarly threadbare his clothing and respectful in the doffing of his cap, does have the fashionably zazzera-haired appearance of an upper-class Venetian.

None of the figures are shown with halos and the artist, in common with Titian and Michelangelo, both working in the same period, achieves a more naturalistic figural outcome as a result. The infant looks remarkably unremarkable for the son of God, as he clutches the edge of his white cloth laid over a sheaf of straw, betraying no sign of divinity or of the role he will play in the salvation of mankind. What is more, the composition decentralises the principal figures, relegating them to the right as if the artist were determined to prioritise context and a sense of self-effacement over public scrutiny and obloquy, the outcome that will conclude the life of Jesus.

The landscape shown in the background is more Veneto than Judea, with hills and mountains in the distance and a sea or lakeside town complete with anachronistic church and palazzo among other grand buildings and a tower under construction. A fire burns from inside a cellar opening below the tower to the right, to suggest a smithy perhaps. To the left, sat on the ground below a pitched shingle roof, sits another worker beside a large water trough, likely, a stableman. Staring in his direction from the middle ground are two further figures, one sat at the foot of a tree and pointing his finger, the other leaning against a large rock formation. Both seem at ease, entitled and unaware of the Nativity happening just a short distance away. I think this nonchalance is intended to contrast with the conspicuousness of the shepherds who act as first witnesses to the birth of the messiah, recognising its significance while others go about their daily business obliviously. Strangely, two more stick-like and naked figures stand at the shore’s edge. Is this a reference back to Eden, to the prelapsarian innocence that would be transformed into a state of knowledge and sinfulness that the just born Christ would redeem?

The lush trees, bushes and plants tell us this is fertile land, represented realistically as is the flowing water in the stream to the left. So far, so normal until that is, we notice an angel lying horizontally in the uppermost left tree-top and then on the right above the cave, more ghostly apparitions who appear to be suspended in mid-air, one of their creepily un-cherubic faces seems to be reflected in incongruously situated water. This combination of the spectral with the workaday, the miracle of the Incarnation situated prosaically in a landscape of human activity, the juxtaposition of the divine with the physical, the metaphysical and even the malevolent, is what marks out Giorgione’s for the strange and beguiling masterpiece it is.

I was mystified by the prominence given to the hefty tree stump shown in the bottom left foreground. I am indebted to those scholars who have identified this as a reference to the Old Testament prophesy ‘But a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom’. Jesse was the father of David, and the stump represents his seemingly extinguished dynastic line. The shoot equates to the Messiah, the saviour, who, as prophesied, has now appeared. As viewers of this devotional work, a space has been left for us by the four figures surrounding the baby – by joining them, we complete his encirclement and so we too share in the adoration.