Adoration of the Shepherds
After 1575. Oil on canvas.Not on display
This is a modest bottega product illustrating the passage on the birth of Christ (Luke 2: 8-20) which lends itself particularly well to a nocturnal setting. It is a replica, not of the Adoration of the Shepherds Jacopo executed in 1590 for San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, as previously believed, but of the painting depicting the same theme housed at the Louvre (inv. 430), which is an entirely autograph work by Jacopo and is dated to 1575. The Prado version uses the same general composition as the Louvre painting. It also shares the same setting -the humble cabin aside impressive classical ruins- and the arrangement of the figures, though some have changed position (the Child) or physiognomy (the shepherd in a most upright position). The sources of light remain the same: the Child, the flash of heavenly light, the candle and the little shepherd blowing on the burning coal, though the Prado replica has a crepuscular light that is absent from the Paris original. The paintings are practically the same size (the one in the Louvre measures 126 x 104 cm), which suggests that a ricordo of the original work was used to execute the Prado version.
A comparison with the Adoración de los Pastores (P25) reveals the poorer quality of this work, but also the use of a different technique. Whereas in Jacopo´s work, the quick play of short brushstrokes had a decisive role in creating the effects of light on the bodies, enlivening the surface, in the Prado version, longer and less vibrant brushstrokes of colour were used to achieve these effects.
Although the Adoration of the Shepherds entered the royal collection under Isabella Farnese, a Bassanesque work of similar characteristics but inferior quality hung in the small cloister of the old church of the Escorial at the end of the 16th century. Francisco Pacheco (1564-1644) must have seen this painting, for when he criticised the painters who depicted the Christ Child naked in his El Arte de la Pintura, he cited the example of Juan de Roelas´s Adoration of the Shepherds in the Jesuit church in Seville, stating that the artist portrayed Jesus in this manner imitando al Basan. There is a smaller (80 x 105 cm) copy of poor quality, probably Spanish, at the convent of Madres Mecedarias de Don Juan de Alarcon in Madrid (Text drawn from Falomir, M.: Los Bassano en la España del Siglo de Oro, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2001, p. 231).
