Drag the print to move it. The painting is shown at true scale; where its shape differs from the sheet the print has a paper border, not drawn here. Prints are sold unframed, and a frame here is only for planning.
The Nativity
early 1480s · Oil on wood (probably poplar) · The National Gallery, London
For Christmas · 25 December
Sizes
image 8×8.2 in on a 8×10 in sheet
What is dpi?
Dots per inch: how many pixels of the museum’s file go into each inch of paper. Our floor is 240 for sheets up to 20 inches, 180 up to 36 inches and 120 beyond, because a larger print is seen from further away. We never offer a sheet below the floor, and the number on each size is the one you receive.
Hahnemühle Photo Rag, 308 gsm cotton rag · pigment inks · printed to order
Printed to order · the whole painting, never cropped · if it arrives damaged, we replace it
Free shipping, included in the price, to all eight countries we ship to. Dispatched in 2–4 working days — nothing to send back if it arrives damaged.
Send as a gift
A printed card goes in the parcel with your message and the work’s museum record. No price is shown anywhere in the parcel. Enter the recipient’s address at checkout.
0 / 240Have a gift certificate?
The certificate’s balance is applied at checkout; any remainder is paid there. Check a balance or buy one.
Christmas: order by Monday 7 December for delivery in the United States before Christmas.
All editionsAbout this painting
The Christ Child lies naked on a corner of His Mother's blue mantle, on the bare ground, and she kneels over Him with her hands together. The National Gallery reads Piero della Francesca's arrangement as Saint Bridget of Sweden's vision, Mary kneeling over the newborn Christ in place of the older reclining Virgin, and its technical study found the light through the broken roof, with no cast shadows, set there on purpose to mark a vision rather than daylight. Five angels sing, two with lutes. On the roof a magpie sits; Sarah Kent reads it as stilled by their song and bearing witness with the rest. Behind stand the ox and the ass, which tradition, as Naomi Grant notes, held to have known Christ before men did. Old inventories place the work in a bedchamber of the painter's family palace at Sansepolcro. The earth under the Child is only earth.
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)