Adoration of the Shepherds is a scene of humble reverence, where an infant Christ is met with gifts from common shepherds and warmth from farm animals.
It was a popular narrative for Renaissance and Baroque painters, and one that the Bassano family spent decades refining.
Though Francesco Bassano the Younger’s grandfather was a provincial artist in his native Bassano del Grappa northwest of Venice, it was his father, Jacopo, who founded the family’s influential workshop.
Jacopo, unlike his predecessors, painted landscapes directly from life, focusing on rural landscapes, peasants, livestock, and farming. And despite his seclusion in Bassano, he became a leading Venetian artist.
Regardless of his success, Jacopo felt he worked in the shadow of Venetian artists like Titian and Veronese.
He would go on to train his four sons, reproducing many of his most celebrated paintings. It was Francesco (his eldest) who became the most successful of the sons.
In Francesco Bassano’s Adoration of the Shepherds, the artist borrows many of the elements from his father’s work, Bassano uses a similar approach, providing the same detailed attention to the people as well as livestock.
The vibrant colors, aerial perspective, and multiple light sources from the cherubs, the distant sky, and the Christ child are trademarks of the Bassano style.
Francesco worked alongside his father his entire life. Though he eventually moved to Venice, opening his own workshop, Jacopo remained a strong presence and influence by designing compositions for his son to copy.
Francesco’s work earned him several notable commissions, including a series of ceiling paintings for the council chambers at the Doge’s Palace — the Venetian seat of government.
Even then, Francesco still recruited his father to help design and complete the work.
At the height of his career, Francesco grew depressed and manic with feelings of persecution, ultimately throwing himself from the window of his home and dying only a few months before his father.
And just as Jacopo never felt that he had escaped the shadow of his contemporaries, Francesco may have never been able to escape his father’s.
