Stable in the Cliffs, Nativity Christian Wall Art

What is painted

Most of the picture is landscape. Great walls of rock climb almost to the top edge, painted in washes of ochre, sand and blue gray, with a gnarled olive tree and scrub in the foreground. At the foot of the right-hand cliff, a shallow cave has been closed off with timbers and a low stone wall, and inside, very small, Mary kneels in blue beside the child in the manger while Joseph stands nearby. A donkey waits by the entrance.

High above, in the pale sky, a single small star shines over the cave. The people are tiny and the rock is huge, yet the eye finds them anyway. No words are printed on it.

Was Jesus born in a cave?

The Gospels do not describe the building. Luke says only that Mary laid her son in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn (Luke 2:7), and Matthew says the wise men found the child after the star went before them and stood over where he was (Matthew 2:9).

An ancient Christian tradition, recorded as early as the second century by Justin Martyr, says the birth took place in a cave near Bethlehem. Houses in the region were often built against limestone hillsides, with animals kept in rock hollows at the back. The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem stands over a grotto honored as the birthplace, and Eastern icons of the Nativity usually show a dark cave in a mountain.

This watercolor follows that older image rather than the wooden barn of later Western art. It makes the scene humbler and wilder at the same time: God entering the world not in a palace but in a hole in the rock.

For the Christmas season

The dramatic landscape makes this a striking piece for a living room, a stairway or an entry during Advent and Christmas, and one that can stay up through the winter. It is a lovely gift for a baptism in the Christmas season, for a family's first Christmas in a new home, or for anyone drawn to Orthodox and Catholic traditions.

The Christian poster is printed to order in the United States on thick archival matte paper and ships free there. It comes unframed with a white paper margin, in sizes from 5x7 to 24x36, in A and metric sizes too, or as a digital file.