an atmospheric picture tour
Joyfully rejoicing or quietly moved, the participants react to the child in the stable in Bethlehem. With mother, father, child, angels, ox and donkey, hard-hearted innkeepers and dangerous persecutors, the Christmas story simply contains everything: the family, higher and lower beings, good and bad, rich and poor people. And the theme of the birth, the beginning of life, concerns all people existentially. With this story, the evangelist gave painters material for the most amiable and dramatic pictorial inventions.