26/12/2020
Merry Christmas
đ Merry Christmas from all of us at the National Gallery!
Jan Brueghel seems to have squeezed a whole world into his tiny picture. A crowd waits patiently for a turn to come closer to the little child on his motherâs knee. The baby is bare, to show us that heâs a real human baby, but the silvery arrow of light tells us something more. The old man kneeling is a king. He wears no crown and neither do the kings on either side of him. Itâs the child that wears the true crown â a delicate halo that would outshine any earthly crown, for it announces him as the Son of God. Brueghelâs delicate picture was made to be handled. It was a talking point but also a reminder of a great religious event. Its owner would have enjoyed the strange mixture of beauty and ugliness that the artist often put into his pictures, bringing everyday people into incidents of great significance: https://bit.ly/37nwqhH