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Drawing, Adoration of the Shepherds
This is a Drawing. It was created by Ubaldo Gandolfi. It is dated 1766 and we acquired it in 1938. Its medium is pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, black chalk on white laid paper, laid down on blue wove paper. It is a part of the Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design department.
In the late fourteenth century, an elderly nun named Bridget experienced a mystical vision. Born in Sweden in 1303, Bridget (now St. Bridget) was nearly seventy when she made a pilgrimage to Bethlehem, and witnessed a holy sight. In her account of what transpired, St. Bridget describes a vision of the birth of Jesus in which the newborn child emitted a radiant light that filled the humble stable where he was born. The baby, Bridget explains, glowed brighter than a nearby candle–so bright, indeed, “that the sun could not compare to it.”[1]
St. Bridget’s mystic vision of the Nativity gave western artists an opportunity to explore the remarkable expressive potential of divine light. In a late fifteenth-century painting by the Netherlandish artist Geertgen tot Sint Jans, for example, the baby in a manger glows with a warm light that softly illuminates the adoring faces of the Virgin Mary and a troop of tiny angels. In a sixteenth-century Italian version by Correggio, however, the holy light shines with such force that a woman squints, and has to shield her eyes. Rembrandt, in his etching, places a candle on the wall at the very heart of the image, making light itself–as a divine metaphor–the protagonist of his Nativity scene.
The drawing above, housed in Cooper Hewitt’s collection, depicts this same Christmas story, and likewise relies on St. Bridget’s account. It was created in 1766 by the Bolognese artist Ubaldo Gandolfi (1728-1781), who here employs a careful application of ink to build contrasts between areas of light and dark. Gandolfi’s drawing makes sophisticated use of the blank white paper, using it to provide areas of highlight (such as the undersides of the clouds, and Mary’s long neck). Subtle washes of ink create shadows where the child’s holy light does not reach. The effect is as magical as St. Bridget’s account.
Rembrandt, ca. 1654
Correggio (detail), ca. 1530
Geertgen tot Sint Jans, ca. 1490
Dr. Julia Siemon is Assistant Curator of Drawings, Prints & Graphic Design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
[1] St. Bridget of Sweden, Revelations of St. Bridget… (New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1862), 38.
It is credited Museum purchase through gift of various donors and from Eleanor G. Hewitt Fund.
Its dimensions are
28.2 x 19.5 cm (11 1/8 x 7 11/16 in.) mount 31.2 x 22.2cm Mat: 45.7 x 35.6 cm (18 x 14 in.)
It has the following markings
Mounted to cream laid paper with a watermark of an encircled fleur-de-lis
Cite this object as
Drawing, Adoration of the Shepherds; Ubaldo Gandolfi (Italian, 1728 – 1781); Italy; pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, black chalk on white laid paper, laid down on blue wove paper; 28.2 x 19.5 cm (11 1/8 x 7 11/16 in.) mount 31.2 x 22.2cm Mat: 45.7 x 35.6 cm (18 x 14 in.); Museum purchase through gift of various donors and from Eleanor G. Hewitt Fund; 1938-88-4362
This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition The Cooper-Hewitt Collections: A Design Resource.
