The Story of A Painting Elie Shamir

On 17 March 2006 I visited the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London. Throughout that day I sketched copies of several oil paintings. At the end of the day, fairly worn out, I reached the gallery's farthest wing, almost separate, accessible via a long corridor. In one of the corners I entered a tiny room exhibiting several paintings by Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca. On the right, alone on a narrow wall, the Nativity hangs; I was struck by its modest beauty.

The painting shows five angelic singers singing the praise of the newborn babe, an ox and a donkey – a visual expression of the verse "the ox knows his owner, and the donkey his master's crib", Joseph seated on a chair (a section where traces of sketching are also visible), Mary kneeling in prayer on the rim of her dress, and the baby Jesus placed on her cloak on clumps of earth. The painting is unique in several aspects, but is most extraordinary in the human facet it presents: in contrast with custom, the baby Jesus does not welcome his admirers here. Jesus is but a little baby reaching out his arms for an embrace. Jesus wants love. Jesus does not want adoration – but its opposite, and love is the opposite of adoration. Adoration is distance, as well as a kind of tyranny, mutual tyranny, mutual use. The baby Jesus does not seek the role and only wants his mother's warmth. His mother's adoration is the beginning of the process that would end with crucifixion. I knew already then that I would paint a picture inspired by this painting by della Francesca. I made a sketch of Nativity and wrote "choir" next to it. In my mind I saw a painting of a choir in a landscape.

Della Francesca's painting followed me for a whole year, and on 8 April 2007 I returned to London, to deliver one of my paintings for an exhibition at the nearby National Portrait Gallery. I entered the National Gallery for a day's work again, and by the end of the day I was again standing before della Francesca's Nativity. Now I understood: for me, the baby Jesus was the second generation of Kfar Yehoshua, my parents' generation. Baby Jesus laid on the clumps of earth is the generation of sacrifice, the generation of the "silver salver", a generation raised and taught to fill a role, to perform a lofty mission. And embraces are a distraction. While observing Piero della Francesca's painting, the image of the baby on the earth was linked in my mind with stories I had heard about the early days of Kfar Yehoshua.

In those days, when children were born it was impossible for one of the parents to give up agricultural work, since work was done by family members alone – as a principle but also because of poverty. The parents would place their baby on the ground (there were no shade-providing trees then) and set out to work the fields – kilometers of weeding and thinning out; meanwhile the newborn was getting tough (in an ancient Greek Spartan style) and prepared for his mission in life. I come here not to judge the members of the first generation. They were occupied with real survival and must have adored their son, who grew and got taller (much taller than them, usually) – but there wasn't always an embrace there.

I returned to Israel and within a few weeks organized my singers, young women, mothers occupied with their own world, as well as Giora Koppel – a farmer and musician, to whom I assigned the role of Joseph in the composition (according to della Francesca's Nativity). We set out together for thirty minutes of photography at dusk on a summer's eve. I seated "Joseph" the accordion player, and placed the singers who sang The Song of the Valley, their voices carried away, with their hair, in the dusk breeze. The scene was surreal and bizarre. I took some photographs and immediately began painting on the already stretched and prepared canvas. The title I gave this painting was Lullaby for the Valley.

The painting process lasted about a year, and in late 2008 was sent to an exhibition of contemporary Israeli art in Rome. The opening at the Vittoriano Museum in Piazza Venezia was on 15 December 2008. I travelled to Rome for a week to attend the opening and to see some art. On 14 December, a day before the opening, I went to the Villa Borghese for a day of sketching at the museum. I stopped in front of Titian's Sacred and Profane Love, touched by the infinite gentleness of the folds in the bride's dress. When I returned and looked again at the singers in Lullaby for the Valley exhibited in Rome, I decided not to ignore Titian's lesson, and to somehow improve "Flora's" dress,

Once the exhibition in Rome closed, the painting was sent directly to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art; on Thursday, 19 March 2009, I travelled to the museum with my paint box and slightly improved Mor's floral dress. Thus I completed work on the painting – three years and two days after first imagining it in view of della Francesca's painting.