The Nativity
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
Mary kneels over her newborn son, naked upon the mantle she has spread to shield him from the bare earth — not the older reclining Madonna. Piero paints Saint Bridget of Sweden's vision: light falls through a hole in the shed roof onto stone, yet the figures cast no shadow, a sign this is vision, not daylight.
Angels sing; their music stills the magpie on the roof, and even it bears witness. The ox and ass, tradition held, knew their king when men did not.
The panel hung in a bedchamber of the family palace at Sansepolcro, not a church.
Sources: The National Gallery, London, Piero della Francesca, 'The Nativity', NG908. · National Gallery, 'Restoring Piero della Francesca's Nativity' · Naomi Grant, "At the National Gallery: 'The Nativity' Restored," London Review of Books, vol. 45 no. 14 (2023) · "In time for Christmas: London's National Gallery unveils newly-restored Piero della Francesca nativity scene," The Art Newspaper, 29 November 2022 · Sarah Kent, "Yuletide Scenes: Piero della Francesca's Nativity", theartsdesk.com, 21 December 2015.
And she brought forth her first born son and wrapped him up in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger: because there was no room for them in the inn.
Luke 2:7 · Douay-Rheims (Challoner), from the project’s own corpus at data/bible_drc.js
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 6,000 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.