Images(3)

The Adoration of the Christ Child

Artist Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) b. circa 1488/1490 (?), Pieve di Cadore; d. 1576, Venice

Datecirca 1506

MediumOil on panel, transferred to Masonite

Dimensions7 1/2 x 6 3/8 in. (19.1 x 16.2 cm)
Frame: 14 3/4 x 13 1/8 x 4 1/4 in. (37.5 x 33.3 x 10.8 cm)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineGift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Object numberGL.60.17.41

On View

Not on view

Label TextThe Venetian painter Titian attained international celebrity during his lifetime. This panel is one of his earliest known paintings. Its subject derives from a mystical vision of the nativity of Christ by Bridget of Sweden (1303–77), an influential nun who recounted seeing the infant Jesus “lying on the earth, naked and glowing in the greatest of neatness.”

Titian accordingly depicted Christ’s body as emitting enough light to cause Joseph’s yellow cloak to glow. The thick brushstrokes and complex layering of colors—remarkable in a panel of this size—were to become hallmarks of the mature Titian, one of the great colorists in the history of art.
[L. Humphrey, “The People’s Collection, Reimagined,” 2023]
ProvenanceCreated in Venice ca. 1506. French private collection [1]. [Frederick Mont, New York, by 1952]; purchased by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, January 30, 1952, inv. K1874 (as Titian); given to the NCMA in 1961.

[1] Per invoice from Mont to the Kress Foundation dated 30 January 1952: https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/acquisitions/ACQ074.

Published ReferencesBernhard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), 571.

Arthur M. Hind, Early Italian Engravings (London: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. for Washington DC: National Gallery of Art, 1948), vol. 5, 246–247; vol. 7, 1, pl. 830 (related engraving).

Hans Tietze and Erika Tietze-Conrat, "Giulio Campagnola’s Engravings,” Print Collector’s Quarterly 29, no. 2 (April 1942), 201–203.

Wilhelm Emil Suida, “Spigolature giorgionesche,” Arte Veneta 8 (1954), 153–166 at 155, illus. (b-w) 155 (as young Titian).

Giorgione e I Giorgioneschi, edited by Pietro Zampetti (exhibition catalogue) (Venice: Palazzo Ducale, 1955), 166, illus. 167, cat. no. 75.

Antonio Morassi, “Un disegno e un dipinto sconosciuti di Giorgione,” Emporium 121, no. 724 (April 1955), 147–159 at 149–154, fig. 7 (as Giorgione).

Guido Perocco, “La mostra di Giorgione e I giorgioneschi al Palazzo Ducale di Venezia,” Emporium 122, no. 727 (July 1955), 18 (as Titian & Giorgione).

Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Venetian School, vol. 1 (London: The Phaidon Press, 1957), 86 (as Giorgionesque).

Fern Rusk Shapley with W. R. Valentiner, The Samuel H. Kress Collection (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1960), 84, illus. (b-w) 85.

Art Treasures for America from the Samuel H. Kress Collection (exhibition catalogue) (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1961), cat. no. 94 (as Titian).

Guy Emerson, “The Kress Collection: A Gift to the Nation,” National Geographic 120, no. 6 (December 1961), illus. (color) 830.

Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools: XV–XVI Century (London: The Phaidon Press, 1968), 185–186, illus. fig. 422, K1874 (as Titian).

Harold E. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian, vol. 1 (London: The Phaidon Press, 1969), 117–118 (as school of Giorgione).

Exhibition Number One from the Permanent Collection (exhibition catalogue) (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1970), 30, illus. (color) 31.

S. J. Freedberg, Painting in Italy, 1500 to 1600, The Pelican History of Art (London: Penguin Books, 1971), 477n31; 478n40.

Terisio Pignatti, Giorgione (London: The Phaidon Press, 1971), 134–135, illus. fig. 151.

“The Adoration of the Child,” We the People of North Carolina (December 1972), 16.

Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools: XVI–XVII Century (London: The Phaidon Press, 1973), 393.

Edgar Peters Bowron, ed., Introduction to the Collections (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the North Carolina Museum of Art, 1983), illus. (b-w) 186.

Hilliard T. Goldfarb, “An early masterpiece by Titian rediscovered, and its stylistic implications,” Burlington Magazine 126, no. 976 (July 1984), 419–420, 423–424, illus. fig. 46.

“Master F.N., The Nativity [B.1 (367)]” in The Illustrated Bartsch, vol. 25, ed. Mark J. Zucker (New York: Abaris Books, 1984), 459–60, 242.

Introduction to the Collections, 2nd rev. ed. (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1992), illus. (b-w) 171.

"Cima's Madonna and Child in a Landscape," Preview (Winter 1993), mentioned and illus. (b-w) 13.

Sydney J. Freedberg, “The Attribution of the Allendale Nativity,” in Titian 500. Studies in the History of Art 45 (1993), 58, fig. 9.

Paul Joannides, Titian to 1518 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 39, 73–74, 161.

Francesca Del Torre Scheuch, in Giorgione: Myth and Enigma (exhibition catalogue), eds. Sylvia Ferino-Pagden and Giovanna Nepi Scirè (Milan: Skira for the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, 2004), 244.

Peter Humfrey, Titian: The Complete Paintings (Bruges: Ludion, 2007), 30, cat. no. 1.

Irina Artemieva, “New Light on Titian’s ‘Flight into Egypt’ in the Hermitage,” The Burlington Magazine 154, no. 1306 (January 2012), 4-11 at 9.

Antonio Mazzotta, Titian: A fresh look at nature (exhibition catalogue) (London and New Haven: The National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2012), 48 (catalogue mention only).

Angelica Daneo, ed., Glory of Venice: Masterworks of the Renaissance (exhibition catalogue) (Denver: Denver Art Museum, 2016), 113, cat. no. 48, illus. (color).

Klára Garas, “The History of Collecting Giorgione in America – An Outline,” Acta Historiae Artium 59 (2018): 43, 65n21, 66n54, fig. 13.

Lyle Humphrey, “Saul Among the Prophets: W.R. Valentiner, Robert L. Humber, Carl W. Hamilton, and the Italian Collection at the NCMA,” Collecting Early Modern Art (1400–1800) in the U.S. South, Lisandra Estevez, ed. (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021), 23, 45.

Kress Collection Digital Archive, National Gallery of Art, accessed 8/1/25, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/3122.Exhibition HistoryVenice, Palazzo Ducale, "Giorgione e I Giorgioeschi," June 11-October 23, 1955, cat. no.

Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, "Art Treasures for America: From the Samuel H. Kress Collection," December 10, 1961-February 4, 1962, cat. no. 94.

Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art, "Exhibition Number One from the Permanent Collection," October 1970.

Denver, CO, Denver Art Museum, "Glory of Venice: Masterworks of the Renaissance," October 2, 2016–February 12, 2017; Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, March 4–June 18, 2017, cat. no. 48.

Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "Venice and the Ottoman Empire," September 28, 2024-January 5, 2025. Object Rights Statement

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