Lorenzo di Credi, 'The Virgin adoring the Child', 1490-1500

The Virgin Mary kneels on a grassy patch in the foreground, seemingly undisturbed by our intrusive gaze. Her hands are clasped in prayer as she faces her infant son, who is lying naked on a blanket before her. His right elbow rests on a pillow, his left hand on his stomach. His head is turned to the left, seemingly distracted by something happening outside the space depicted.

The Virgin and Christ Child form a triangular shape that dominates the rectangular picture plane, and their presence in the foreground helps to bring out the blues, greens, reds and yellows of the Virgin’s garments. The green lining of the Virgin’s mantle picks up the colours of the grass and trees that populate the landscape behind the pair. These tones would be more powerful were they not covered by yellowed varnish and slightly discoloured retouching.

A dead oak grows somewhat implausibly above the ruinous wall that separates foreground and background; the fresh leaves sprouting from it may comment on the spiritual renewal associated with Christ’s birth. The wall is broken enough to reveal, as if through a window, two shepherds resting on a distant hill. One is playing the bagpipes, but it is the blue angel hovering mid-air that seems to wake the other. This is the Archangel Gabriel, delivering the message of Christ’s birth: ‘And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord’ (Luke 2: 10–11). That Christ is neither shown in swaddling clothes nor lying in a manger is probably due to another important account: the visions of the fourteenth-century mystic Saint Bridget of Sweden. Widely read across Europe, Bridget’s visions of the Nativity, said to have occurred during her visit of the Holy Land, had a profound impact on the representation of that subject in art. Bridget memorably described the newborn as lying naked on the ground in front of his fair-haired mother.

We don't know who this painting was made for, but it is likely that it adorned a Florentine household, offering a visual aid for prayer. Lorenzo, a devout Christian himself, specialised in the production of religious paintings. Thanks to his training – alongside Leonardo da Vinci – in the highly successful workshop of the Florentine painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio, which he later inherited, Lorenzo developed an almost sculptural approach to painting. Subtle gradations of colour, seen especially in the flesh tones, help to create the illusion of three-dimensional form.