The Birth of Christ

Mary kneels in a white robe before the child, who lies naked on the ground. Joseph shields a candle with his hand. Three shepherds look in over a half-door, and at the right two women in rich dresses kneel, with angels and long scrolls above them.

The two women are the midwives of an old legend. One of them, Salome, would not believe that a virgin had given birth, and her hand withered; an angel tells her to touch the child. Behind the shed a road winds through a winter landscape towards a rising sun, one of the earliest such landscapes in Netherlandish painting.