1506
oil
panel
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
The Nativity is a 1506 oil by Fra Bartolomeo, a High Renaissance work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
You see Mary and Joseph kneeling in a dark stable, their hands folded in prayer over the baby Jesus, who glows on a bed of straw. Fra Bartolommeo took a break from painting for four years after joining a strict religious group. When he returned, he softened the faces and folded the fabric in gentle curves, as if the figures had just stopped moving. Look up *chiaroscuro* to see how light and shadow shape quiet scenes like this one.
To develop his own intimate style, Fra Bartolommeo looked to the most lyrical and harmonious paintings of his fellow artists working in Florence in the first years of the 16th century, including Leonardo da Vinci , Michelangelo , and Raphael . When the young artist came under the spell of the ardent Dominican reformer Girolamo Savonarola in 1500, he abandoned his artistic career for several years to join the order, becoming Fra (Friar) Bartolommeo. He made this work after his return to painting in 1504, investing it with a new spirituality.
Sold through the Monastery of San Marco, Florence, to Domenico Perini, April 16, 1507; sent by Domenico Perini to France and possibly sold to Louis XII, King of France, along with a Noli me tangere now in the Louvre, according to a list of all Fra Bartolommeo’s pictures compiled in 1516; Bedemeau de Buxerolles, Poitou. Tabarly collection, Blois, Pierre Landry, Paris, by 1955; his heirs, sold, Christie’s, London, 11 July 2001, no. 68 to Haboldt and Company, Paris; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2005.
Paris, Galeries nationales, Grand Palais, France 1500: Entre Moyen Age et Renaissance, Oct. 5, 2010–Jan. 10, 2011, cat. 200. Art Institute of Chicago, Kings, Queens, and Courtiers: Art in Early Renaissance France, Feb. 26–May 30, 2011, cat. 115. Rotterdam, Museum Boijamns Van Beuningen, Fra Bartolommeo: The Divine Renaissance, Oct. 15 2016- Jan. 15, 2017, cat. 5 (ill).
Read the full account in the museum source.
Fra Bartolomeo or Bartolommeo (UK: , US: , Italian: ; 28 March 1472 – 31 October 1517), also known as Bartolommeo di Pagholo, Bartolommeo di San Marco, Bartolomeo di Paolo di Jacopo del Fattorino, and his original…
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