Still-Life Masterpiece : Members of Camarillo Church Pose to Re-Create Famed Nativity Painting

The painting is perhaps the single canvas that secured a place in art history for a little-known Dutch painter.

Though Gerrit van Honthorst enjoyed the patronage of powerful Italian noblemen and studied under the master painter Caravaggio, it was the luminous “Adoration of the Shepherds” that lifted him from obscurity.

The power of the 1620 painting--a depiction of the birth of Christ using subtle yet lustrous tones--captured the imagination of an eastern Camarillo church congregation that wanted to re-create a living Nativity scene based on one of the art world’s masterpieces.

“We selected it from about five paintings researched from the Renaissance and Baroque periods,” said Craig Misuradze, production director for Crossroads Community Church, which is sponsoring the production.

“When we first saw it, we knew that it was the one,” he said. “I think we are all moved by it--you could even say it spoke to us.”

That was last summer.

Now some six months later, the evangelical church is presenting a human-scale outdoor rendering of the painting--reproduced down to the color of its rich, brown backdrop, the design of the shepherds’ clothing and the way light radiates from the face of the Christ child.

“We didn’t want to do it if we weren’t going to be true to the art,” Misuradze said. “We wanted to do something that was both meaningful in terms of art and religion.”

For two hours each evening now through Dec. 23, members of the public can witness and compare for themselves the accuracy of the living reproduction. To help them, Misuradze said, organizers have placed a framed poster of the original painting nearby.

Two sets of costumed church members playing the shepherds, Joseph and Mary will each take an hour shift during the nightly production, Misuradze said. Overhead, cherubs circle on a painted backdrop.

A porcelain-crafted Christ child will stand in for a real baby; organizers fear exposing a child to the evening cold.

Misuradze said more than 200 members of the church will take part in the production.

“We have gone so far as to even dye fabric so it would match the colors of the painting,” he said. “It’s been a very painstaking process, but it’s also been a labor of love.”

Glenn Harcourt, an assistant professor of art history at the University of Southern California, said Crossroads picked an interesting painter’s canvas to re-create.

Harcourt, a specialist in Northern European Renaissance and Baroque painting, said many of van Honthorst’s canvases involved images of secular, earthy scenes that detailed day-to-day human existence.

A student of the famed Italian painter Caravaggio, van Honthorst became expert in his use of his master’s trademark chiaroscuro: the partial illumination of figures against a painting’s dark background, Harcourt said. He even assumed an Italian nickname: Gherardo delle Notti.

It was his expertise in the manipulation of light that made his religious works stand out among the rest of his portfolio.

“I would say that ‘Adoration of the Shepherds’ is arguably one of his most powerful works,” Harcourt said. “Through his control of the light, he was able to make it appear that the sole source of light is coming from the Christ child himself. It’s really quite remarkable.”

Ironically, the painting that helped lift van Honthorst from the shadows of his masters was destroyed in 1993 when a terrorist’s car bomb damaged a section of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, where it was on display.

While Crossroads Pastor Tom Brewer called the painting’s destruction a tragedy, he said that he and members of the church take comfort in the fact that through their living display, more people will come to know van Honthorst’s work.

“The painting captures the phenomenal sense of the event,” Brewer said. “It has both a sense of the celestial and the earthly. I don’t think our people could have picked a better painting to make come alive.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

FYI

Members of the Crossroads Community Church will re-create a living version of Gerrit van Honthorst’s famous Nativity painting, “Adoration of the Shepherds.” The free presentation, which began Friday, will run nightly from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. through Dec. 23. The church is at 1221 Calle Suerte, Camarillo. Information: 484-8586.