La Nativité

Lattanzio di Niccolò di Liberatore da Foligno's La Nativité (Nativity), painted around 1450 and now in the Musée du Petit Palais in Avignon, is a devotional Nativity panel by a member of the distinguished da Foligno painting family active in Umbria. Niccolò di Liberatore da Foligno (called Alunno) was the most celebrated member of this family, but Lattanzio worked in the family tradition producing devotional works for the Umbrian churches and monasteries that were the main patrons of regional Italian painting.

Tempera on panel with the Umbrian tradition's characteristic luminosity and tender figure treatment. The Nativity is organized around the radiant figure of the infant Christ, who often illuminates the surrounding darkness in Umbrian treatments influenced by Flemish nocturnal light effects.