Tempera and oil on panel. Venetian-Cretan school of the 17th-18th century. The term Venetian-Cretan School (or Creto-Venetian) indicates an important pictorial school, also known as the Post-Byzantine school, a movement that flourished on the island of Crete under the control of the Serenissima of Venice between 1204 and 1669. Thanks to the political situation, particularly after the fall of Constantinople, Crete became the main Christian artistic center of Greek origin from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. In this environment a particular pictorial style developed which was marked by tradition and movements of both Byzantine and Latin origin. In particular, given the important demand for Byzantine icons in Europe, the island soon became a center of production of these works of art. The style of the Byzantine icon is found in this work, which proposes a subject widely re-proposed in art, namely the Adoration of the Shepherds at the birth of Jesus: the figures of the Holy Family and the Shepherds are strongly attributable to the traditional Byzantine iconographic representation , but they are placed in a more Latin landscape, which opens wide, with a depth of perspective that refers to seventeenth-century European landscape painting, without the traditional gold background but with chromatic choices that still recall the divine golden light, in particular where an angel announcing the Glory of God looks out from the open heavens. The painting has a detachment of the paint in the central part, corresponding to a previous restoration, which requires further recovery. On the back of the plate there is a sealing wax stamp. The painting is presented in an antique wooden frame.