This is a dark painting, and it is meant to be. Bloch painted it in 1882, a few years after the oratory series, in the spirit of Rembrandt: almost everything sinks into brown shadow, and the eye goes to a few warm patches of light.
The shepherds stand at the left as silhouettes against a doorway. Mary lies in the straw at the right, one hand on the swaddled child, and looks up at them. The surface is covered in fine cracks from age; zoom in and you can see them in the dark paint.
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