Focus on Nativity of the Virgin (del Sarto) and explain the Description and style.
The painting is derived, like the rest of the cycle, from a work of Domenico Ghirlandaio, the Natività di Maria of the Tornabuoni Chapel in Santa Maria Novella. The bed has a similar composition, with the people arranged around it, although del Sarto rotated the elements and added vertical components with the canopy and angels crowded around the scene. The richness of the poses, often linked to references, the balanced artificiality, the sumptuous clothes, the reduced palette of rare colors such as violets, made the Nativity a key work of the 16th century that was often studied by Mannerist painters.
Art historian Luciano Berti emphasized the work's "sustained, but warm, prose" and the monumental effect given by the canopied bed.
Santa Maria Novella Tornabuoni Chapel Domenico Ghirlandaio Mannerist Luciano Berti Sarto