Few themes in Christian art will have been more represented than the Birth of Christ or Nativity, which is sometimes identified with the Adoration of the Shepherds, since they are frequently represented together following the brief Gospel narrative of Luke, which refers to them as two consecutive moments. It is usual that the two Adorations, that of the shepherds and that of the Magi, occupy the part leave of the altarpieces, being shown as the basis and foundation of the redemption, as can be seen in some works of the artistic heritage of Navarre. The iconography of the Nativity solidly established in the medieval centuries is very diverse depending on the texts that narrate the event, fundamentally the Bible (Luke 2), the apocryphal Gospels, and other narrations such as the Golden Legend of Jacobo de la Vorágine as well as theological and mystical writings, texts that coincide in the central message which is the birth of Christ, the Messiah announced in the Old Testament, of a Virgin called Mary that takes place in a stable during the night.

They differ instead in some accidental variants that introduce richness in the representation. Already in the Renaissance the Flemish and Italian painters will leave us masterful versions of this passage of the Infancy of Christ according to the different way of conceiving painting in the two schools, more dramatic and realistic the Flemish, more humanistic and in search of formal beauty the Italian, although both dependent on the spirit and the prevailing theory in each place and time.

Choral worship

The history of painting offers us an exceptional reference of this topic for its complex iconography full of symbolism in the Adoration of the Shepherds painted on the large central panel of the Portinari Triptych by the Flemish painter Hugo van der Goes. It represents a choral adoration centered on the Virgin who, kneeling, adores the Child who has just been born, lying naked on the ground in the midst of a great calm. In adoration also appears St. Joseph and forming a circle different types of angels, some with more celestial luminous tunics and others more earthly with rain capes embroidered in gold and vermilion. Next to them burst into the scene three shepherds with tanned and realistic faces that join their big gnarled hands full of devotion. They are the first to hear the advertisement and the first to come to adore the newborn. They stand out for their larger scale than the angels themselves, skipping the laws of the hierarchy of the figures according to their rank, showing a new humanism. Adoration of Mary and Joseph, angelic adorations and adoration and rustic piety of the shepherds, multiple simultaneous adorations that seem to follow the story of the Revelations of St. Bridget of Sweden. Two vases with flowers in the foreground add a further symbolism to the scene, for they announce the Passion, while the sheaf of wheat placed between the two vessels contains a Eucharistic content.

The Portinari Triptych (1478) was commissioned by the Florentine Tommaso Portinari to the painter in Bruges, where he was the Medici's representative, and sent to Florence for the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. The work caused a great impact among the Florentine painters who had to imitate the realism of their shepherds copied by Ghirlandaio and contemplated by Botticelli and Leonardo. They admired in the Portinarino Triptych not only the poetics of the Flemish painters but also the refined technique of oil painting and its delicate glazes, not well known by the Florentines who instead practiced tempera and were masters in fresco. The Portinari Triptych is now located in one of the rooms of the Uffizi Gallery, surrounded by Botticelli's pagan and literary Mythologies, and its presence here offers an opportunity to reflect on this transcendental contact of the two great European schools.

Orthodoxy and Decorum

As the Renaissance progressed, Italian types and models were imposed, as can be seen in the painted panel of the Nativity of the Cathedral of Pamplona due to a painter of the Toledo school within the circle of Juan de Borgoña. It represents Mary covering the naked Child lying on a stone ashlar that is associated with the cornerstone of Isaiah's prophecy (28:16) and is related to a martyr's altar. Mary covers the newborn with a swaddling cloth held with her two hands with great delicacy. The child radiates light from his naked body, signifying that the Messiah is the light of the world. According to the texts, the Child was born clean, radiant as lightning. St. Joseph adores the newborn as do two angels perched on the ground and the shepherds behind are recognizable only by their three heads. The heavenly court glorifies the child through the Gloria in excelsis Deo intoned by the angels according to the score they hold in their hands. Classical ruins cover the scene indicating that the New Testament will be built on the collapsed building of the Old Testament.

The Counter-Reformation demanded the thematic correctness and decorum from religious representations, that is to say, the adequacy of figures and scenes to the topic represented, as well as clarity so that they could be understood by the faithful. Very illustrative in this place is the failure of the Italian painter Zuccaro who arrived preceded of great fame to El Escorial and who Philip II commissioned the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Adoration of the Kings for the main altarpiece of the Basilica. Sigüenza tells how the painter, satisfied with his work, wanted to show the king the Adoration of the Shepherds that offered in the foreground a basket of eggs. Philip II asked if they were eggs that a shepherd had there in a basket to present them to the recently born Virgin Mary" and rejected the work, which was not placed in the altarpiece for which it had been made. The strict requirement of thematic correctness and the sense of decorum led the king to this rejection because the worshipers according to the Gospel were shepherds and not shepherds, and the painting was replaced by another Adoration of the Shepherds by the also Italian Tibaldi once Zuccaro had returned to Italy. rules and regulations On the other hand, the Nativity scene of the altarpiece of the cathedral of Pamplona, now in the parish of San Miguel, commissioned by a Counter-Reformist prelate and faithful defender of orthodoxy, Don Antonio Zapata, bishop of Pamplona, fulfills all the requirements of religious art of this period. Compliance with the principle of decorum does not deprive the scene of a certain spontaneity, representing St. Joseph active and not half asleep as it appears in medieval art. Thus, he dominates the mule with his halter, while the head of the ox appears above the Child, occupying the center of the circle formed by Mary and the shepherd with his saddlebags offering the lamb. The shepherds are three and represent the three ages of life. Its author, Pedro González de San Pedro, sculpted one of the most beautiful and finished scenes of the Pamplona Christmas within the classicism in force at the end of the sixteenth century.

In the same Counter-Reformation period, the Adoration of the Shepherds of the altarpiece of the monastery of La Oliva, today in San Pedro de Tafalla, constitutes a true culmination of this iconography in painting whose angels and shepherds through composition, gestures and color express the joy and surprise of the world before the event. The complexity of the scene and its modernity is echoed in the documentation of La Oliva (1571) which, according to the painter, requires a composition "well accompanied and as it is used, the holy Joseph, and ox, and donkey, and shepherds that adorn, and the angels with glory in ecelssis, all new and very graceful". Work of the Flemish painter Paulo Schepers, it means the entrance of the Venetianism in the painting on our ground in a perfect work of the great art. Similar thematic correction sample the Adoration of the shepherds of the monastery of Fitero (1590), work of Rolan Mois, which represents a nocturnal scene with the Child turned into a focus of light remaining in the half-light the three shepherds whose well characterized heads announce the naturalism, fulfilling the requirements of the contract in which we read "ensuring that the figures are as natural" in tune with a naturalism that was making its way.