Four men, a boy, an ox, and a donkey crowd around a young woman holding a baby inside a shadowy wooden structure in this vertical painting. Five angels, all with blond curly hair and two with wings, float in a bank of gray clouds above. The men below have tanned skin while the boy, woman, baby, and angels have pale skin with rosy cheeks. All of their faces are illuminated by the bright light emanating from the baby, Jesus, who lies cradled in the woman’s arms. That woman, Mary, sits to our left of center next to the manger, a wooden structure like a crate, overflowing with straw, on which…
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The Adoration of the Shepherds

Anton Raphael Mengs (German, 1728 - 1779)

c. 1764/1765

Medium
oil on canvas
Classification
Painting
Dimensions
overall: 264.16 × 152.4 cm (104 × 60 in.) ; framed: 338.14 × 222.25 cm (133 1/8 × 87 1/2 in.)
Culture
German
Museum
National Gallery of Art, CIS-B
Credit line
Corcoran Collection (Gift of William Wilson Corcoran, 1869)
Rights
Public domain (NGA Open Access, CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed

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