On hearing in 1929 that his native city of Belfast had just built an art gallery but had no paintings to fill it the painter Sir John Lavery decided to generously gift 34 paintings of his own.
Just before this Christmas that same art gallery, now the Ulster Museum, unveiled its most recent acquisition bequeathed through generosity: appropriately a same-named depiction of a Nativity scene dating from the High Renaissance, which the museum’s chief art curator, Anne Stewart, described as “truly a Christmas gift for our visitors”.
