The Adoration of the Shepherds
Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo, 1540
The Adoration of the Shepherds, painted around 1540 by Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo, belongs to the last phase of the artist's career. The scene unfolds before a hut from which the ox and the donkey emerge from the half-light, as Mary and Joseph gaze at the Child. Both are shown without haloes or attributes, with plain, almost rustic faces. Behind them, through a small window, two shepherds lean in to help, while a third rests against a wall on the right. These everyday figures follow a Flemish tradition that Savoldo had come to know in Venice, yet he lifts them with a refined, elegant technique. A striking realistic detail is the veil of dust on the carpenter's shoe, a touch that is often thought to have influenced Caravaggio. The only supernatural hint is a turquoise glow in the distant sky, representing the angel of the Annunciation. Its intense shadows and thick, pasty paint that suggests velvet make it one of the artist's final works, and he produced several variants of the subject.
- Painter
- Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo
- Date
- 1540
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Dimensions
- 192 × 178 cm
- Museum
- Tosio Martinengo Gallery, Brescia
- Genre
- religious art
- Depicts
- boy, Mary, woman, Christ Child
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