The Adoration of the Shepherds

La Tour has gathered a group of five sympathetically observed worshippers around the Christ Child, who seems to radiate more light than he can possibly simply reflect from the candle held by Joseph. This last detail is significant. La Tour brings a sense of intimacy and tenderness to the scene.  There is no sense of theatricality in La Tour's interpretation: no dramatic gestures or exaggerated expressions.

In this painting one can see a style of rendering figures that helped distinguish La Tour from the approach of Caravaggio (to whom he was/is routinely compared). While Caravaggio tended to emphasize the sculptural qualities of his subjects by painting them before he painted the background, which he then darkened depending on what was needed, always being sure not to let the background and the subject come into pictorial contact with each other, La Tour made very distinct borders between the background colors, which he then painted independently so that the figures were transformed into shapes applied to the background, with no dialectical rapport between the two.

In La Tour's nativity painting, the Christ child, swaddled in white cloth, is featured bathed in light in the center of the composition. Mary sits on the left, hands clasped in prayer while Joseph, sitting directly across from her, has his hands raised in praise. Two shepherds and a peasant girl occupy the background and look down on the baby adoringly. 

This oil on canvas painting is in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France.