The Adoration of the Shepherds, 1612–14
Oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid
It always boggles my mind to look at a work by El Greco and realize how long ago it was painted. There's such a modern sensibility to his work that makes it hard to believe he died almost 400 years ago.
This, by the way, is the first LJ post I've made on my own computer since the first day of December. That evening, I rebooted my laptop after updating my anti-virus program, but it wouldn't restart: msvcr80.dll couldn't be found. I tried booting into safe mode. I tried booting with the last known good configuration. I tried Startup Repair. Nada. So I took it to my friendly neighborhood computer shop (which there are tons of in Madison, unlike in northern Virginia), and after several days was told that the primary hard drive had failed. Bummer! But it had failed in a good way, so they were able to image the old drive onto a new one, so I neither lost any data nor had to restore anything from backup. It's a Christmas miracle!
Previous Advent posts:
2003: Make We Joy
2004: Merry Xmas 1921
2005: The Night Before Christmas
2006: Our Christmas Tree
2007: Flight into Egypt
2008: All I Want For Christmas is You
2009: From Hamlet, Act I, Scene 1
