This unpublished painting executed in tempera and depicting the Nativity of Jesus is the companion piece to another unique work also on twill (sarga) with similar dimensions and identical style, which employs great subtlety and detail in its presentation of the well-known iconographic subject of the Tree of Jesse, which enjoyed great success and popularity in the final centuries of the middle ages.
Presenting the same technique and pictorial execution, these two companion pieces, the Tree of Jesse, depicting Christ’s ancestry (as included in the Gospels of Matthew 1: 1-17 and Luke 3: 23-38), and the Nativity of Jesus, date from the first quarter of the 16th century in the artistic context of Burgos, and both present a clear debt to Flemish art, in style and in the choice of iconographic models.