Martin Gayford

This radical Nativity is also one of the great whodunnits of art history

You can see the very birth of landscape painting in the Allendale Nativity

Religious awe combined with a sensuous pleasure in the beauty of the world: ‘The Adoration of the Shepherds’, 1505–10 by Giorgione, also known as the Allendale Nativity. [National Gallery of Art Washington DC] 
issue 18 December 2021

On 25 October 1510 Isabella d’Este, the Marchioness of Mantua, wrote a letter to her agent in Venice inquiring after a certain highly collectable item. ‘We believe that in the effects and the estate of Zorzo da Castelfranco, the painter, there exists a painting of a night scene, very beautiful and unusual.’

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