The Newborn
The original, as its museum records it
Every line above is reproduced from the holding institution’s own catalogue entry, which is linked. Where their title, date or attribution differs from ours, theirs is the one printed here.
The file this print is made from
Sizes
About this painting
Nothing here proves a religious subject. Rennes lists the absences: no halos, no costly drapery, plain clothes. The subject was long disputed: a mother, her child, a second woman.
A candle burns behind the older woman's hand, so the light has no visible source, and the museum reads it as suggesting the newborn's divine nature. Isabelle Majorel finds the rest in the mother's face: dignity and melancholy identifying her as Mary, foreseeing her son's fate; the red prefigures his Passion.
The Virgin, Saint Anne and the Christ Child were identified from La Tour's other canvases. The painter, not until 1915.
Sources: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, visite autonome — chefs-d'œuvre. · Bretagne Musées, collection record, 'Le Nouveau-né'. · Isabelle Majorel, 'Le Nouveau-né,' Panorama de l'Art, 30 August 2011
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 4,075 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.