Nativity at Night

Nativity at Night, in the National Gallery London, is a revolutionary work in the history of Western painting—one of the earliest depictions of artificial light as the primary light source in a narrative composition. The newborn Christ radiates light that illuminates the faces of Mary, Joseph, and the adoring angels, while the darkness of the stable creates a sharp luministic contrast. Painted around 1490, the work anticipates the nocturnal effects that would preoccupy painters from Caravaggio to Georges de La Tour a full century later.

Geertgen constructs the light effects entirely from the Christ Child as source, modeling the surrounding faces in soft warm illumination that falls off rapidly into the surrounding dark. Each face is painted with the graduated tonal modeling needed to describe this primary light, a technical challenge that Geertgen meets with remarkable success in what is a relatively small panel.