The Nativity

Photo © Martin Crampin, Imaging the Bible in Wales larger image

probably about 1850 Panel set within patterned glass, depicting Mary, Joseph and the infant Christ. technique: stained glass size: 25 cm (width) [approx] reset by: Heaton, Butler & Bayne Church of St Mary, Newport, Pembrokeshire south wall of the chancel Reset 1879 by Heaton, Butler & Bayne. The fourteenth century date and place of origin as Austria given in the 1989 guidebook to the church is unlikely. If the glass is early it has been heavily restored. The same composition of the Nativity occurs reproduced in the 1840s illuminated Book of Collects in St Davids Cathedral Library, and in other stained glass windows across Wales dating to around the 1850s. A common source (perhaps a woodcut or engraving) has not yet been identified. The composition has similarities to The Nativity by Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-94) which has been at the FitzWilliam Museum in Cambridge since 1912 and was previously in private hands (FitzWilliam Accession No. M54). The glass and the Nativity illustration in the St Davids Cathedral Collects MS could have been inspired by a popular engraving of this work, but are not copies of it, and there are other late fifteenth-century depictions of this scene with similarities. See Fitzwilliam Museum website.  (ObjectID=764 ImageID=1353) Original File Name=_MG_3337.jpg

This artwork is indexed under the following main subject(s):
for other works containing these subjects please click on the links.

• Mary, Joseph and the new-born Christ (Nativity)  [Luke 2:1-7]

Martin Crampin, Stained Glass from Welsh Churches (Talybont: Y Lolfa, 2014), p. 98.

Thomas Lloyd, Julian Orbach and Robert Scourfield, The Buildings of Wales: Pembrokeshire (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 317.

Painton Cowen, A Guide to Stained Glass in Britain (London: Michael Joseph, 1985), p. 222.

Photo © Martin Crampin, Imaging the Bible in Wales