"We turn Renaissance and baroque paintings into empty kitsch when we appropriate them as part of modern Christmas celebrations, which in truth have little in common with the much more religious world that created these images. Look a bit harder and the great paintings of the nativity story that we sentimentalise at Christmas are full of death and decay. Some are are literally apocalyptic. Far from soppy, painted equivalents of a modern school nativity play, these paintings are premonitory visions of suffering that invite the most serious of meditations"

 

Leonardo da Vinci - A Adoração dos Magos (1481-2)