Holy Family with a Shepherd Titian 1510
This masterpiece by Titian in the National Gallery appears at first glance to be a perfectly conventional depiction of the birth of Christ and the adoration of a shepherd. It seems to have all the usual ingredients, but as Eric Morecambe might say, ‘Not necessarily in the right order!’
The first surprise is that it is Joseph, not Mary with her baby, holding centre stage. Normally Joseph lingers in the background and shadows with not much to do, while shepherds and wise men arrive in waves to worship the baby that isn’t really his. In this one, however he is the dominant figure, actively interposing himself between his wife and baby and this stranger. He leans back, holding Jesus’ feet while sternly placing his staff between his family and the young man.
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So what of the young man? He is assumed to be a shepherd. But where are his sheep? Or his lamb? And his staff isn’t a crook, just a straight walking stave. The most distinctive thing about him is the barrel at his waist, presumably to hold drinking water. He could just as easily be a carter, journeyman or passing traveller. Any one of us. An ‘Everyman’.
In the background we can see an angel hovering rather unconvincingly over a craggy hillside with a flock of sheep and a couple of roughly depicted shepherds. In early Renaissance painting it would be quite normal to have different time frames depicted in the same composition, so that the various key episodes of the story could be told. But this is 1510, the height of the High Renaissance. Such story telling feels anachronistic in a mature and sophisticated composition.
So that presents us with a mystery. If the angel’s appearance to the shepherds is happening in real time and is not a narrative time shift but is contemporaneous, how did our young man, our carter or journeyman beat the shepherds to it? How does he know that this baby is special and worthy of adoration? What instinct alerted him? What spiritual intuition?
So maybe… just maybe, if our young man is not a shepherd and has not heard the message from the angels, this painting is really depicting the action by the Holy Spirit acting on the young man, leading him to kneel and worship. The Holy Spirit is a co-eternal part of the Trinity, active eternally prior to Pentecost. So just possibly Titian’s painting is a celebration of the Holy Trinity just as much as it is of the birth of Jesus.
One final observation: having seen a great many dawns at sea, the sky in this painting does not seem to show the hot, vibrant heat of a sunset, but the cool, gentle warmth of a dawn. What better way to indicate that this is a Beginning?
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/titian-the-holy-family-with-a-shepherd