Antoni Gaudí, The Nativity Portal: Detail, the children above
Gaudí has followed medieval iconography in arranging this horizontal line of angelic figures above the site of the Nativity, but in his adaptation the figures are not angels but children. He is thus able to displace to actual children the childish delight that medieval artists sometimes portrayed in the shepherds. (For example, compare the three children to the right of the center of this grouping with the shepherds in the 15th century Burgundian relief in the Metropolitan Museum.) Gaudí's shepherds, ranged to the right of the Nativity group, are not childlike at all but carried away by a mature rapture.
View the Whole Nativity Portal.
Read more about images of the Nativity.
Photographed at the church by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.