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The Nativity
Jacopo Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti) (Italian (Venetian), about 1518–1594)
late 1550s, reworked 1570s
Medium/Technique
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
155.6 x 358.1 cm (61 1/4 x 141 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Quincy A. Shaw, Jr.
Accession Number46.1430
CollectionsEurope
ClassificationsPaintings
Recent x-radiography has revealed that the creation of this painting was unusually complicated. Tintoretto essentially recycled the two large female figures (the Virgin Mary and an older woman, perhaps Saint Anne) from a vertical painting of the Crucifixion he’d made about twenty years earlier. The Christ Child, Joseph, and the sketchy background scenes, depicting the Journey of the Magi and the Annunciation to the Shepherds, were added by assistants when the canvas was transformed into a horizontal format. The reason for the dramatic surgery isn’t clear yet.
ProvenanceUntil about 1860s or 1870s, said to be in a church in a town north of Florence; about 1860s or 1870s (possibly in 1874), sold to Quincy Adams Shaw (b. 1825 - d. 1908), Boston [see note 1]; by descent to his son, Quincy Adams Shaw, Jr., Boston; 1946, gift of Quincy Adams Shaw, Jr., to the MFA. (Accession Date: December 12, 1946)
NOTES
[1] A letter from Quincy Adams Shaw, Jr., to W. G. Constable of the MFA (December 24, 1946; in the MFA curatorial file) states that his father had purchased the painting in Italy, perhaps in 1874, and that it had hung over the altar of a church in a small town north of Florence, the name of which he could not recall. The painting was certainly in the Shaw collection by 1881, when it was mentioned in "Greta's Boston Letters," Art Amateur 5, no. 4 (September, 1881), p. 73. Edward Strahan, The Art Treasures of America, vol. 3 (Philadelphia, 1882), p. 87, wrote that it was "obtained at Venice."
NOTES
[1] A letter from Quincy Adams Shaw, Jr., to W. G. Constable of the MFA (December 24, 1946; in the MFA curatorial file) states that his father had purchased the painting in Italy, perhaps in 1874, and that it had hung over the altar of a church in a small town north of Florence, the name of which he could not recall. The painting was certainly in the Shaw collection by 1881, when it was mentioned in "Greta's Boston Letters," Art Amateur 5, no. 4 (September, 1881), p. 73. Edward Strahan, The Art Treasures of America, vol. 3 (Philadelphia, 1882), p. 87, wrote that it was "obtained at Venice."