Geburt Christi

The Master of the Rajhrad Altarpiece is an anonymous Bohemian painter identified from the large altarpiece originally at Rajhrad Monastery, now in Brno. Working around 1420–1430, this painter represents the distinctly Bohemian variant of International Gothic, which fused the soft, Parisian elegance of the Beautiful Style with the more intense expressiveness of German Gothic. The Nativity panel of around 1425 would have been the central devotional image of the Rajhrad altarpiece's Christmas season iconographic program, depicting the tender moment of Christ's birth with the full cast of figures conventional in Bohemian nativity iconography.

Bohemian panel painting of this period is distinguished by a characteristic softness in facial modeling — rounded, almost boneless faces with heavy-lidded eyes — that derives from the Beautiful Style of the 1390s-1410s. The nativity scene's humble setting and the intimacy of the shepherds and animals are rendered with the decorative refinement of the court style, creating a characteristic courtly-devotional fusion.