Nativity angels panel

In this stained-glass window fragment from 12th-century France, two winged angels, dressed in white robes with murrey-colored mantles, are positioned on either side of a yellow Star of Bethlehem. The star is a clear reference to the journey of the Wise Men, described in the Gospel of Matthew: “When they heard the king, they departed; and behold, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was” (2:9).

The two angels gesture downward to a curving line at the bottom of the fragment. This was originally the top of the opening of the cave in which the birth of the Christ Child took place. The choice of a cave, instead of a stable, as the location of the Nativity miracle, suggests that this window was influenced by Byzantine examples. (The earliest Christians located the birth of Jesus in a cave, and this was the standard depiction in Byzantine art of the 12th century.)