The Nativity

1504/07

Fra Bartolommeo (Baccio della Porta; Italian, 1472-1517)

The young Baccio della Porta came under the spell of the charismatic Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, joining his monastic order as Fra (Friar) Bartolommeo in 1500 and forsaking his painting career for several years. Returning to painting in 1504, he looked to the most lyrical and harmonious recent works of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo to form his own style, which was characterized by a new, quiet spirituality. The palette of saturated blue, red, and green announces the Holy Family, while the muted tones of the angels’ garments establish an otherworldly presence. Here he treated the Nativity in a traditional, though especially intimate, manner. The Virgin kneels humbly as she gazes at the Christ Child, while Joseph assumes a pose of restrained wonderment, as if suddenly aware of the infant’s divine nature. The family shelters in a rustic stall erected within the ruins of an edifice understood to be the palace of David at Bethlehem. This juxtaposition of architecture symbolizes Christ’s establishment of his new church on the Old Testament order of the Jews. Reinforcing this device is a young tree springing from a remnant of ancient stones directly above the infant.

Status: On View, Gallery 205
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Fra Bartolommeo
Title: The Nativity
Place: Italy (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1504–1507
Medium: Oil on panel
Dimensions: 34 × 24.5 cm (13 3/8 × 9 5/8 in.); Framed: 52.7 × 35.6 cm (20 3/4 × 14 1/16 in.)
Credit Line: Ethel T. Scarborough Fund; John G. Searle Family Trust, L. L. and A. S. Coburn, Mr. and Mrs. Lester King, John and Josephine Louis, Samuel A. Marx, Alexander McKay, Chester D. Tripp, and Murray Vale endowment funds; purchased with funds provided by Marilynn Alsdorf, Anne Searle Bent, David and Celia Hilliard, Alexandra and John Nichols, Mrs. Harold T. Martin, Mrs. George B. Young in memory of her husband, and the Rhoades Foundation; gift of John Bross and members of the Old Masters Society in memory of Louise Smith Bross; through prior gift of the George F. Harding, Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Kimball, Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson, and Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester collections
Reference Number: 2005.49
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/184371/manifest.json

Enrico Ridolfi, “Notizie sopra varie opere di Fra da San Marco,” Giornale Ligustico di archeologica, storia e belle arti 5 (1878), p. 122.
P. Vincenzo Marchese, Memorie dei più insigni pittori, scultori e architetti domenicani, 4th ed., vol. 2, Bologne, 1879, p. 177.
Fritz Knapp, Fra Bartolommeo della Porta und die Schule von San Marco, Halle, 1903, p. 271.
Janet Cox-Rearick, La Collection de François Ier, exhib. cat., Paris, Musée du Louvre, Les dossiers du département des peintures, 1972, p. 24.
Janet Cox-Rearick, The Collection of Francis I: Royal Treasures, Antwerp, 1996, pp. 167-8, no. V-2.
Chris Fischer, Fra Bartolommeo et son atelier. Dessins et peintures des collections françaises, exhib. cat., Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1994, p. 86, under no. 50.
Janet Cox-Rearick, The Collection of Francis I: Royal Treasure, Antwerp, 1996, pp. 168, 447.
E[verett] F[ahy] in L’Età di Savonarola: Fra Bartolomeo e la scuola di San Marco, exhib. cat. Florence, Palazzo Pitti and Museo di San Marco, 1996, p. 85, under no, 17.
Serena Padovani, “Il Tondo Visconti Venosta: un capolavoro della prima maturità di Fra Bartolommeo,” in Un restauro per Fra’ Bartolomeo, exh. cat. , edited by Lavinia Galli Michero, pp. 14–16, 19.
Bruce Boucher, “Notable Acquisitions at the Art Institute of Chicago,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 32, no. 1 (2006), p. 56, ill. p. 57.
“The Story of Art Retold: New Acquisitions at the Art Institute of Chicago,” Apollo (October 2008): 46 (ill.).
Hamboldt & Co. Singular Vision: Hamboldt & Co.’s Old Master Paintings and Drawings since 1983. Amserdamn: Hamboldt & Co., 2012. p. 36-37.
Albert J. Elen and Chris Fischer, Fra Bartolommeo. The Divine Renaissance, exh. cat. (Rotterdam, Museum Boijamns Van Beuningen, 2016), 40, 72, 102-109, 214, cat. 5 (ill).

Paris, Galeries nationales, Grand Palais, France 1500: Entre Moyen Age et Renaissance, Oct. 5, 2010–Jan. 10, 2011, cat. 200.
Art Institute of Chicago, Kings, Queens, and Courtiers: Art in Early Renaissance France, Feb. 26–May 30, 2011, cat. 115.
Rotterdam, Museum Boijamns Van Beuningen, Fra Bartolommeo: The Divine Renaissance, Oct. 15 2016- Jan. 15, 2017, cat. 5 (ill).

Sold through the Monastery of San Marco, Florence, to Domenico Perini, April 16, 1507; sent by Domenico Perini to France and possibly sold to Louis XII, King of France, along with a Noli me tangere now in the Louvre, according to a list of all Fra Bartolommeo’s pictures compiled in 1516; Bedemeau de Buxerolles, Poitou. Tabarly collection, Blois, Pierre Landry, Paris, by 1955; his heirs, sold, Christie’s, London, 11 July 2001, no. 68 to Haboldt and Company, Paris; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2005.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

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