Adoration of the Shepherds

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Adoration of the Shepherds: Peter Paul Rubens

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Peter Paul Rubens Oil Painting - Adoration of the Shepherds

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Work Overview: Adoration of the Shepherds
Peter-Paul Rubens
Date: c.1608
Style: Baroque
Genre: religious painting
Medium: Oil on panel
Dimensions: 300 cm × 192 cm (120 in × 76 in)
Location: Pinacoteca civica, Fermo

Adoration of the Shepherds is an oil on canvas painting dating to 1608, painted by Peter Paul Rubens. It was rediscovered at the start of the twentieth century by the art historian Roberto Longhi, who identified it with the painting recorded as La notte in 1607.[1]

Produced in around three months for the church of saint Philip Neri in Fermo, its chiaroscuro is in the style of Caravaggio, who Rubens had got to know in Rome during the Flemish painter's ten years' study in Italy.It is now held at the Pinacoteca civica in Fermo.

It shows the shepherds reaching the stable of the Nativity, with the Virgin Mary showing the baby Jesus to the shepherds, four swirling angels holding up a scroll announcing Jesus's birth and with St Joseph, two female figures and two male figures in the left background. It has recently been suggested[who?] that the elderly female figure can be identified with the disbelieving midwife of the Gospel of James, raising her hands to heaven as she is cured.

The Adoration of the Shepherds has its scriptural source in Luke 2:15-21. Rubens’s prototype for his treatment of this event is known to have been Correggio’s Nativity Night {“La Notte”) (Gemaldegalerie, Dresden), which he may have seen in the Church of San Prospero, Reggio. There are similarities both in the overall structure of the composition and in a number of details. Rubens may well have had Correggio’s painting in mind when, in concluding

his contract, he promised Ricci “to paint no fewer than five large figures, namely the Madonna, Saint Joseph, three shepherds, and the baby Jesus in the manger, and furthermore to paint above the manger what is usually called a glory of angels.” The deliberately homely shepherds in Rubens’s sketch, who differ sharply from Correggio’s idealized figures, show the influence of the great reformer of Italian painting, Caravaggio. The old woman in particular, with her hands raised in prayer and her face turned toward Mary in veneration, is a reworking of a similar figure from Caravaggio’s Madonna di Loreto (Sant’Agostino, Rome). Further evidence of Caravaggio’s impact is the strong contrast of light and shade in this sketch.

Although using Correggio’s composition as his starting point, Rubens modified it to suit his own purposes. In Correggio's painting the infant is illumined by a bright light that imbues the scene with a sense of immateriality; the event seems to be a miraculous vision, a mirage. Rubens, by contrast, emphasized the palpable corporeality of each figure, inspiring belief in the reality of the scene being depicted.

A preparatory drawing for the sketch is in the Museum Fodor, Amsterdam. A copy of the altarpiece itself, executed in Rubens’s studio, is in the Church of Saint Paul, Antwerp.

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Peter Paul Rubens

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