Adoration of the shepherds

Adoration of the Shepherds at the Certosa di San Martino in Naples (1641) is one of Reni's last great altarpieces, completed the year before his death and reflecting the luminous tenderness of his final style. The Certosa di San Martino, a Carthusian monastery perched above Naples on the Vomero hill with sweeping views of the bay, accumulated one of the most remarkable collections of Baroque art in southern Italy — Caravaggio, Ribera, Stanzione, and now Reni among its treasures. Naples was a major center of seventeenth-century Italian art, and Reni received commissions from Neapolitan patrons despite working primarily in Bologna and Rome. The Adoration's enormous scale (485 × 350 cm) suited the Certosa's grand church, where the painting would be viewed from below against the altarpiece's architectural frame. The shepherds' awe before the divine infant — Reni renders them with the idealizing tenderness that characterized his treatment of sacred childhood — expresses the wonder that was among the Counter-Reformation's central devotional experiences.

The divine light emanating from the Christ Child illuminates the adoring shepherds. Reni's late style shows increasingly ethereal handling and a silvery palette that anticipates Rococo luminosity.