Central Virginia Arts will present a lecture by Barbara Rothermel from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts on Nativity in Art on Sunday at 3 p.m. at Hampden-Sydney’s Atkinson Museum. The lecture is free and open to the public. Christian art includes a great many representations of the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child. Such works are generally referred to as

the “Madonna and Child” or “Virgin and Child.” They are not usually representations of the Nativity specifically, but are often devotional objects representing a particular aspect or attribute of the Virgin Mary, or Jesus. Nativity pictures, on the other hand, are specifically illustrative and include many narrative details; they are a normal component of the sequences illustrating both the Life of Christ and the Life of the Virgin.

Significant among the narrative, symbolic images of the life of Christ are scenes concerning the birth of Jesus, and hence the birth of the Church. This lecture looks at the Nativity cycle — the Visitation, the Nativity, the Annunciation to and Adoration of the Shepherds, and the Adoration of the Magi — from the earliest days of the Christian church through the Renaissance.

Barbara Rothermel earned an MA in Museum Studies with an emphasis in Art History at the University of Oklahoma and her Ph.D. in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester. She is now the director of the Daura Gallery and Associate Professor of Museum Studies at Lynchburg College. Read more at: https://www.vmfa.museum/statewide/faculty-member/barbara-rothermel/#34DTE0mjFQrk5Gwi.99