Adoration of the Shepherds

 The Holy Innocents, 28th December, 2023

     Just over a hundred years separates today's image - 'The Adoration of the Shepherds', by Philippe de Champaigne (1602-74) in London's Wallace Collection - from yesterday's; and, although perhaps not a fair comparison for they are not of the same genre, the contrast in style and technique could not be greater: lucidity to mystery, hieratic to fluid drama, from an even light to the theatrical disposition of light and darkness. It is, paradoxically, both a maximalist and minimalist work - by minimalist I mean the ruthless expurging of extraneous detail. As in all Baroque art, all is subsumed into a whole that is designed to elicit, to excite, an emotional response in the viewer. While in yesterday's painting the subjects were either deep in contemplation or addressing the viewer, here the figures are completely oblivious to the observer being entirely caught up in the communal moment when the shepherds are brought into the divine presence.

     According to The Wallace Collection website The Adoration was painted c1645. It is a large work, some 260x160cms, commissioned, perhaps, for Abbey of Notre Dame de Quincy, where it is tempting to think it formed part of an altarpiece.

     Altarpiece, or not, the whole thing, I think, can be read as an allegory of the Eucharist, or rather the Eucharist as it was understood in the Western catholic church in the early years of the seventeenth century.  The shepherds, who can be thought of as the Faithful, have brought a lamb, a bound lamb pointing to Christ's passion and death, as an offering to the infant Christ. It lies upon the floor of the cave.  Christ is the Lamb of God. The Virgin Mary stands as a 'type' of the church presenting to the faithful the incarnate God for adoration, just as the church, in the person of the priest, in the elevation of the consecrated species, presents the faithful the risen body & blood for adoration.  It was at that moment of adoration that the altarpiece and the liturgical action below it became one and time was collapsed.