The Adoration of the Shepherds

Macrino d'Alba's Adoration of the Shepherds, painted in 1509 and now in the El Paso Museum of Art, depicts the scene described in the Gospel of Luke in which shepherds, directed by angels, come to worship the newborn Christ in the stable at Bethlehem. Macrino d'Alba was the leading painter of the Piedmont region in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, having trained in Milan and absorbed influence from Foppa, Bergognone, and possibly Leonardo. He returned to Piedmont where he became the dominant figure in local religious painting, combining Lombard refinement with a gentle devotional warmth suitable for the altarpiece commissions that sustained his career. This late work for an American collection documents the wide dispersal of Italian regional paintings.

The nativity group is organized around the infant Christ, with the Virgin and kneeling shepherds creating a circular devotional focus. Macrino's Lombard training shows in the soft atmospheric modeling and the careful rendering of faces. The landscape setting is atmospheric and spacious in the Lombard manner.