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Arts feature

This radical Nativity is also one of the great whodunnits of art history

Martin Gayford on a radical Nativity that is the subject of one of the great whodunnits of art history

18 December 2021

9:00 AM

18 December 2021

9:00 AM

On 25 October 1510 Isabella d’Este, the Marchioness of Mantua, wrote a letter to her agent in Venice inquiring after a certain highly collectable item. ‘We believe that in the effects and the estate of Zorzo da Castelfranco, the painter, there exists a painting of a night scene, very beautiful and unusual.

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