Every time I see Georges de La Tour’s painting “The Newborn Child,” I’m moved beyond words. Any thoughts melt away, and I’m serene.
French artist La Tour (1593–1652) used candlelight to highlight the scene of a mother and her newborn and maybe, also, to hint at a holy event—Jesus’s birth.
Experts differ on whether La Tour painted an anonymous mother, baby, and attendant, or whether the figures are Mary, Jesus, and her mother, St. Anne, or a servant. This ambiguity may just be what makes the painting both timeless and appealing.
La Tour’s intimate composition consists of simple shapes and earthy reds, purples, and browns that together create a warm and tender scene. For instance, let’s assume the painting is a religious work. La Tour painted Mary in a triangle, her outstretched arms and lap forming the edges of the shape that creates the most harmonious of compositions. St. Anne, seen in profile, fits in a narrower triangle. According to a video by Christian Art Today, the red of Mary’s dress signifies the passion of Christ, which points to his future sacrifice for our salvation.
Everything La Tour has painted brings us to the newborn child. Both women gently gaze at Him, bringing our attention to the baby too. At first glance, we can see a golden light emanating from Christ. A closer look reveals that the light comes from St. Anne, who shields a candle with her hand in a gesture that almost acts as a blessing and halo for Christ.
The Artist
In the 17th century, those in the highest echelons of society—Henry II of Lorraine, the Duke de La Ferté, and Cardinal Richelieu—collected French artist La Tour’s genre and religious paintings. Around 1639, he acquired the title “painter in ordinary” (the king’s painter) from King Louis XIII.
Louis XIII famously removed all paintings from one room, just so he could see La Tour’s painting “Night Scene with St. Sebastian” on its own. The location of the painting is now unknown.
La Tour’s work fell into obscurity until 1915, when German art historian Hermann Voss confirmed the artist’s body of work. The chronology of the artist’s work is debated, mainly because of the many unsigned works and the fact that most of his paintings perished in a fire.
Experts generally divide his work into daylight genre scenes painted around 1630 and intimate candlelight scenes that he painted late in his career, around 1645. Carravagio most certainly influenced La Tour’s candle and torchlight scenes. But whether he saw the Italian’s work in Rome or indirectly through Carravagio’s northern followers, such as Gerrit van Honthorst (1592–1656) and Dirck van Baburen (circa 1595–1624), is unknown. Both Honthorst and van Baburen lived in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and created their version of Carravagio’s style. La Tour differs from Carravagio’s dramatic lighting technique in that he used simpler, rounded figures and delicate lighting, giving his works an introspective effect.
According to “The Oxford Companion to Art,” edited by Harold Osborne, “In his own way [La Tour] is considered to represent the spirit of 17th-century French classicism no less than Phillip de Champaigne and Poussin in their different fields.”
In “The Newborn Child,” we see the epitome of La Tour’s candlelight scenes, the universal spirit of the mother–child bond, and the solemnity of unconditional—and maybe even divine—love.
