The Nativity and Infancy of Christ in Painting

The infancy cycle covers the stable, the shepherds, the three kings, the circumcision and the flight into Egypt. Out of it grew the single most repeated composition in Western art — the Madonna and Child, lifted out of the narrative and set on its own as a devotional image. That is why this group holds two things at once: the episodes of the story, and the icon the story produced and then outlived.