The Nativity
The original, as its museum records it
Every line above is reproduced from the holding institution’s own catalogue entry, which is linked. Where their title, date or attribution differs from ours, theirs is the one printed here.
The file this print is made from
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View in the galleryAbout this painting
Lotto signed it on a block of wood at lower right: L. Lotus 1523. It was long taken for a mousetrap, the instrument Meyer Schapiro tied to power against the devil.
Francesco Colalucci looked closer and found a piece of wood with a mortise at one end, the kind used to hold the stand of a picture frame. It is Joseph's handiwork, he argues, carrying the painter's name, linking carpenter and artist.
Behind Joseph, on the shadowed wall at the left edge, a crucifix already hangs. At the top, three angels crowd round a sheet of music.
Sources: Francesco Colalucci, '"Muscipula diaboli"? A Pseudo-Mousetrap in the Adoration by Lorenzo Lotto in Washington', Artibus et Historiae 21 (1990), 71–88, abstract read 2026-09-24 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, object page 1939.1.288 (image description), read 2026-09-24 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, open-data release (objects.csv, object 431), read 2026-09-24
And she brought forth her first born son and wrapped him up in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger: because there was no room for them in the inn.
Luke 2:7 · Douay-Rheims (Challoner)
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 12,255 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.