The Newborn

Georges de La Tour painted The Newborn around 1645, his most intimate and tender nocturnal composition depicting a woman holding a sleeping infant while another figure — perhaps a midwife or second attendant — holds the candle that illuminates the scene. The subject may be secular — a newborn child — or sacred — the Christ child — but La Tour offers no iconographic identification, allowing the image to function simultaneously as devotional painting and as a meditation on the universal experience of the newborn. The sleeping infant's face, warmly illuminated by the candle, is rendered with extraordinary tenderness, while the attending women are absorbed and still. The painting is among La Tour's most beloved works and one of the finest renderings of candlelight in Western art.

The candle flame hidden behind the attendant's hand creates La Tour's signature warm radiance, illuminating the newborn and mother with a simplified geometric clarity that gives the intimate scene a monumental, almost abstract quality.