The Nativity
German, 1444
Stained glass
Metropolitan Museum of Art, acquisition 13.64.3a
This image mostly follows the Brigittine pattern. Joseph and Mary kneel in adoration before the Christ Child, who lies naked on the ground. Other features include the outsize star in the upper left and in the upper right the representation of Bethlehem as a walled city.
The shape of the star, with rays streaming from a central disk, is echoed in the shapes of the flowers on the ground. They could be eglantine or strawberry blooms, which have five petals arranged around a central disk, but they are more likely to be daisies. Eglantine is a bush, and strawberry blooms would be partially covered by the plant's broad, trifoliate leaves, whereas daisies are supported on stalks like the ones that populate the ground in this image. Similar flowers appear in Christ is Born as Man's Redeemer, Lippi's Adoration of the Christ Child, and Gentile da Fabriano's Nativity.
In this window fragment the ass is feeding on the flowers. In many other Nativities it is the child that the beasts appear to feed on, so the flowers may be meant to symbolize Christ himself.
The salvific purpose of the Christ Child's birth is emphasized by the way the gestures and the disposition of the figures echo those in the Entombment panel from the same window. The baby and the dead body are slanted at the same angle. Mary kneels in the center of each frame wearing the same red and blue. Joseph is also echoed by the Entombment's John the Evangelist: each stands at the far right with praying hands.
The woven wattle encircling the Christ Child can also be seen occasionally in late medieval Nativities (example from the 14th century and from the 15th). This relief on a 4th-century sarcophagus similarly represents the manger as formed of something like wattle, but without indication of vertical supports. Another relief from twelve centuries later has a very similar manger.
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Read more about the iconography of the birth of Jesus.
Photographed at the museum by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.