1. Rest on the Flight to Egypt – Orazio Gentileschi
This may seem a rather traditional choice for the number one Christmas work of art; but forget the sweetness of your local nativity play, and look at this Yuletide scene afresh: Gentileschi’s painting is a very odd and dark composition indeed. Cut in half by a damaged brick wall, dominated by the donkey’s head floating above it, while Joseph is collapsed before us, exhausted by his flight from danger, as the holy family flees from the murderous Herod and his massacre of the innocents – they are fugitives under threatening skies. Christmas was never more dramatic than this.