Famous Christmas Paintings: The Nativity in Western Art

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The most famous Christmas paintings are Nativity scenes: Giotto's fresco in the Scrovegni Chapel (about 1305), Geertgen tot Sint Jans's Nativity at Night (about 1490), Sandro Botticelli's Mystic Nativity (1500) and Gerard van Honthorst's Adoration of the Shepherds (1622). Each shows the same night in a different way, and each changes how light and scale carry the story.

Sandro Botticelli, The Mystic Nativity, 1500. Oil on canvas, about 108 x 75 cm. Held in a London collection.

For centuries painters worked from a fixed script for the birth of Christ: a stable, an ox and an ass, a manger, shepherds in the fields. What changed from one century to the next was how they lit the scene and how close they let the viewer come. Four paintings show that change better than any survey.

1. Giotto, Nativity (c.1303-1305)

In the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Giotto di Bondone painted the Nativity as one panel of a fresco cycle, about 200 x 185 cm, commissioned by the banker Enrico Scrovegni. Mary lies on a plain bed under a simple wooden shelter, reaching for the child, while Joseph sits half asleep in the lower corner and angels crowd the sky.

What was new was weight. Giotto's figures have bodies that sit and lean, not flat gold shapes. Mary's gesture toward her son is a mother's gesture first and a sacred one second. It is the starting point for the whole later tradition of the human Nativity. For the wider story of what came after, see The Italian Renaissance in Ten Artists: From Giotto to Titian.

Giotto di Bondone, Nativity, Scrovegni Chapel, c.1305 — Giotto di Bondone, Nativity, c.1303-1305. Fresco, about 200 x 185 cm. Held in a Padua collection.

2. Geertgen tot Sint Jans, Nativity at Night (c.1490)

This is one of the most beautiful small panels in Dutch painting: oil on oak, about 34 x 25 cm. Geertgen, who worked in Haarlem and died young, painted a night scene in which the main light comes from the newborn child himself. It falls on the faces of Mary and the angels who kneel around the manger.

A second, colder light shows at the far edge, where an angel appears to the shepherds in a dawn-blue sky. Painters before him had shown night with gold or dark colour. Geertgen made it a question of two light sources competing, an idea that Dutch and Italian painters took much further a century later. Compare the careful surface of the Northern Renaissance in the same period.

Geertgen tot Sint Jans, Nativity at Night, c.1490 — Geertgen tot Sint Jans, The Nativity at Night, c.1490. Oil on oak panel, about 34 x 25 cm. Held in a London collection.

3. Sandro Botticelli, Mystic Nativity (1500)

Botticelli painted this late in life, in Florence, and it is the strangest picture on this list. The stable sits at the centre, but around it angels dance in a ring beneath a golden sky, olive branches in their hands, and small devils crawl into cracks in the ground at the bottom. A Greek inscription across the top links the picture to the Book of Revelation and to the troubled years Italy was living through.

Botticelli also broke the rules of scale. Mary is far larger than the ox and the ass, and the angels on the roof are smaller than the figures at ground level, so size shows importance rather than distance. It is worth seeing next to his earlier work, which we read in Botticelli Beyond Primavera.

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4. Gerard van Honthorst, Adoration of the Shepherds (1622)

Honthorst, from Utrecht, spent his early years in Rome and came home known as Gerardo delle Notti, Gerard of the Nights. This canvas, about 95 x 131 cm, is the clearest example. There is no halo and no golden sky: the only light in the stable is the child, and it lights the shepherds' astonished faces from below.

Seen close, it is an intimate painting. Mary leans over the baby with her hands raised to shield the glow, and the shepherds crowd in with the awkwardness of ordinary people who have been sent for. Honthorst learned the method of one strong source of light from the followers of Caravaggio in Rome, and in his hands it became the Christmas picture most people now imagine.

Gerard van Honthorst, Adoration of the Shepherds, 1622. Oil on canvas, about 95 x 131 cm. Held in a Florence collection.

What the four paintings have in common

Light: from Giotto's even daylight to Honthorst's single glow, the history of the Nativity is the history of how painters lit a stable.
Scale: Giotto sizes bodies to their weight, Botticelli sizes them to their importance.
Intimacy: each artist moves a little closer, until in 1622 the viewer stands among the shepherds.
Surprise: none of the four paints a quiet greeting card. They paint a night that changes people.

Choosing a painting as a Christmas gift

A Nativity print suits a hallway, a study or a bedroom, and it reads as seasonal without being kitsch. If the person you are buying for prefers a winter scene to a religious one, start with Bruegel's Hunters in the Snow, which is as much a Christmas-season picture as any manger.

Frequently asked questions

What is the most famous Christmas painting?

There is no single answer, but Botticelli's Mystic Nativity (1500) and Giotto's Nativity in the Scrovegni Chapel (about 1305) are two of the most discussed.

Why are Nativity paintings so common in Western art?

The birth of Christ was a central Christian subject, and churches and wealthy families commissioned it constantly from the Middle Ages onward.

What makes Geertgen tot Sint Jans's Nativity at Night special?

It treats the newborn child as the source of light in a dark scene, with a second dawn light at the edge, a very early example of night lighting in oil painting.