The Private Life of a Masterpiece Christmas Masterpieces

The first moment in the Christmas story is the arrival of the Archangel Gabriel to tell Mary that she has been chosen to give birth to the son of God. Many painters have depicted this event, none better than the great Flemish painter Jan Van Eyck. As befits a man who seems to mixed espionage in with painting for his patron, Eyck’s picture is full of symbols and half-concealed messages. It has an extraordinary after-life - sold by the Soviets against the wishes of the Hermitage and bought by a secretive American millionaire who hid it away in a cellar.

Arguably the painting that invented the snowy Christmas card scene, the Census at Bethlehem is a picture that depicts the arrival of Mary and Joseph at Bethlehem But it also a portrays Netherlands village under the grip of a cruel winter and under the hammer of a foreign army. The picture teems with human life as the best Breughels do, but it also speaks to the 21st century in an extraordinary way.

This is a Nativity, and since it is by Paul Gauguin, it is modern and fresh like few recent nativities. This painting is intensely personal. The Madonna is Gauguin’s young Polynesian mistress, who was pregnant with his child. It is a brilliant departure in other ways from traditional nativities, relevant to the contemporary world.