The angel appearing to the shepherds

This previously unknown picture is a characteristic late work by Jacopo Bassano, as Professore Alessandro Ballarin recognised on the basis of a high resolution image: ‘se non sbaglio a giudicare della foto, è un’opera dello stesso Jacopo’ (email of 11 January 2023). Ballarin was the first to recognise that in his old age - in the 1580s - Jacopo developed a looser atmospheric style. This picture, with its subtle nocturnal light, anticipates his late manner, taking its place in a sequence of pictures that express his interest in the tenebrous. The subject allowed the artist to create a religious work that was also a genre scene including numerous animals, as was the case with several of his most characteristic compositions, representing such subjects as the Departure for Canaan, the Meeting at the Golden Gate and episodes from the story of Noah.

This composition has previously been known from a picture assigned to the workshop of Jacopo Bassano’s son Francesco, in the Schönborn-Buchheim collection, Vienna. A related canvas, formerly in the Archivescovado of Milan and now in the Brera, no. 125 (Arslan, 1, p. 353) was regarded by as being from the circle of Leandro. Another representation of the subject in the Kunsthistorisches Museum at Vienna, no. 620, was listed by Arslan (I Bassano, Milan, 1960, I, p. 353), who however, had not seen it.