Antoni Gaudí, The Nativity
Portal
Detail: The Children
Above
Gaudí has
followed medieval iconography in arranging this horizontal line of
angelic figures above the site of the Nativity, but in his adaptation
the figures are not angels but children. He is thus able to displace to
actual children the childish delight that medieval artists sometimes
portrayed in the shepherds. (For example, compare the three children to
the right of the center of this grouping with the shepherds in the 15th century
Burgundian relief in the Metropolitan Museum.) Gaudí's shepherds,
ranged to the right of the Nativity group, are not childlike at all but
carried away by a mature rapture.
More of the Nativity
Photographed on
site by Richard Stracke.