Cabinet Pane with Representation of the Birth of Christ

Mary appears in the centre of this stained glass window with both hands raised in a gesture of pleased surprise. The infant Christ lies to her left (the viewer’s right), pillowed on a fold of her mantle. In the right background we see an ox and ass in their stall, and a shepherd with his sheep in a hilly landscape. A group of three angels floats above them all on the upper edge of the image. On the left, separated from the rest of the scene by a column, Joseph appears in his role as Jesus’ foster-father, stirring something in a pot with a spoon. The roundel belongs to a cycle of nine scenes from the Life of Christ, created between 1475 and 1480 by the Strasbourg glass painter Peter Hemmel (active 1447–1501) for the upper windows in the south wall of the large council chamber of the city hall in Ulm.