Madonna and Child Nativity – by Albert Edelfelt – Christmas Navity – Bethlehem – Catholic Art Print – Archival Quality

This very devout and revernet picture of Mary and Baby Jesus shows them in the stable at Bethlehem. There is a stillness to it, and the attachment between mother and child seems very intense, although very quiet. The blue light over the town has a dreamy, moonlit quality, but the light of love between Jesus and Mary seems warm and a wonder. Albert Gustaf Aristides Edelfelt (1854–1905) was a prolific painter with a huge reputation. His father had died young, and his widowed mother raised their children under financial strain. He went to a Finnish art school as a teenager, and at age 19 he went to Paris, of course, and studied at the great Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He stayed in Paris for years after that, his realist painting gradually acquiring the softer touches of Impressionism. He achieved success in the Salons, especially with a painting of Louis Pasteur, which we hope to include later in our Heroes of Catholic Science series. Satrting in the 1880s, Edelfelt was doing pictures of Jesus