Angels play lute, rebec, and pipe and tabor above manger of Christ's birth.

This early panel by Pedro Berruguete depicts angels making music above the manger of the Christ child's birth, combining the Nativity's devotional warmth with the late medieval delight in musical angelic imagery. The choice to foreground the instruments—lute, rebec, and pipe and tabor—reflects the fifteenth-century theological understanding of angelic music as heaven's harmony made audible at the precise moment of Incarnation. The work predates his Italian sojourn and shows the strong Flemish influence that characterized Spanish painting before Italian Renaissance ideas reached the peninsula in force.

The instruments are rendered with notable descriptive precision, their wooden bodies and strings depicted with a Flemish naturalism that contrasts with the more schematic treatment of the angels' drapery. The faces retain the rounded, gentle features characteristic of Berruguete's early manner before contact with Italian sculptural models transformed his figural approach.