A CLOSER LOOK
This oil-on-panel painting was made around 1515 in the workshop of Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostsanen. Angels fill the stable, each associated with a different musical attribute. Their variety turns the scene into an imagined performance as well as an act of worship.
The architecture includes red porphyry, green marble, and floral designs known as grotteschi. European artists had recently encountered related decoration in excavations of the Domus Aureus, Emperor Nero’s first-century palace in Rome. The buried rooms were approached like grottoes, giving the revived ornamental style its name.
Those classical details also serve the Nativity subject. The museum connects them with a tradition that placed Christ’s birth in a stable built among the ruins of King David’s palace. Pagan Roman ornament, a biblical royal line, and a Christian scene occupy the same invented structure.
The panel measures 98.5 by 76.3 centimetres. The museum attributes it to the workshop rather than treating every passage as the master’s hand. The setting is theological and imaginative, so its architecture should not be read as evidence for the historical appearance of the birthplace.
