North doors panels: 2. Nativity

The theme for Ghiberti’s north doors of the Baptistery is the life of Christ in 20 scenes with the 8 lower panels containing the Evangelists and Fathers of the Church. As these doors were kept shut, except on feast days, the scenes read from the bottom accross both wings.

View the arrangement of the panels on the north doors of the Baptistery.

The picture shows the Nativity, one of the 20 scenes from the life of Christ. In this relief of the Nativity the landscape foreground follows the frame, and the main figures, the Virgin and the shepherds, are placed on a central plane. From the left springs out a herald angel. In the Nativity Ghiberti induces a greater sense of depth than in the earlier Annunciation relief. This is achieved by methods of extraordinary subtlety, the clenched left hand of one of the two shepherds protruding beyond the frame, a contrast in scale between the right arm of the second shepherd and the distant tree nearby, and above all by the Virgin’s head thrust forward from the relief plane and represented looking downwards at the Child.