In this powerful night-scene the light shines from the Christ Child, who lies to the left, and illuminates the kneeling Virgin, who lifts his bedding, and St Joseph, who leans forward with a candle in his right hand and a cloth in his left. The ass’s head at the left confirms that this is a nativity scene. The small panel is almost perfectly preserved. It is a work of great delicacy, yet the manner in which the light emanates from Christ is powerful and convincing. It may be compared with Jacopo’s last great ‘Nativity’ (c. 1590), the altarpiece in San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, where the action of the Virgin is the same, reversed.