This nighttime scene is based on an account by Saint Bridget of Sweden, who claimed to have seen a holy vision of the Nativity during a pilgrimage to Bethlehem in 1372. The details which correlate with Bridget’s account are the young Virgin with flowing hair, the naked Christ Child, and the singing angels. The most important element of Bridget’s vision is the "great and ineffable light" which emanates from the Child to illuminate his surroundings, entirely eclipsing the light of the candle held by Joseph. This effect of illumination allowed painters to both indicate the holiness of the event as well as to experiment with dramatic lighting effects.Friedrich Winkler (1964) believed that there was a lost example of a night Nativity by Hugo van der Goes, of which versions by Gerard David and Michel Sittow (both in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) still exist. Max Friedländer (1916) suggested that Jan Joest of Kalkar painted the prototype for the composition of The Met's painting, which was a popular type in the early sixteenth century in Antwerp. Very little is known of Jan Joest, but our painting and several others are considered to be in his style, based on comparison to his polyptych for the Stadtpfarrkirche Sankt Nicolai in Kalkar, Germany. This artist may be the same Jan Joest found in records of the painters’ guild of Haarlem. The Virgin’s delicate features and the frizzy-haired angels in the Museum's panel are similar to the Virgin and Gabriel in the Kalkar altarpiece, but the faces of Joseph, the shepherds and some of the angels differ enough to indicate that it was more likely painted by a close follower of Joest (Ainsworth 1998). Of special note are the angel next to the Virgin and the shepherd at the center embracing a column who appear to show the facial abnormalities of Down’s Syndrome, and may be an early representation of this phenomenon (Levitas and Reid 2003 and Cornwell 2009). The chorus of six angels with a banderole is an addition to the standard composition which adds a joyful element to the scene. There are two drawings of the same subject that share similarities with our painting, namely one by Joest in the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, and the other by Dirk Vellert in the Szépmüvézeti Múzeum, Budapest. There are also at least ten paintings by the workshop of the Master of Frankfurt, including one in The Met ( 1975.1.116 ). These paintings are regarded as copies after the same prototype upon which this work is based. Examination with infrared reflectography has revealed animated underdrawing, including some slight adjustments made in the hands and faces of some of the angelic figures.[2012]

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