Infant wrapped in swaddling clothes.
In one very ancient example (a miniature of the ninth century in a
Greek Menologium), an attendant is washing the Child.

But from the fourteenth century we find this treatment discontinued.
It gave just offence. The greatest theologians insisted that the birth
of the Infant Christ was as pure and miraculous as his conception; and
it was considered little less than heretical to portray Mary reclining
on a couch as one exhausted by the pangs of childbirth (Isaiah lxvi.
7), or to exhibit assistants as washing the heavenly Infant. "To her
alone," says St. Bernard, "did not the punishment of Eve extend." "Not
in sorrow," says Bishop Taylor, "not in pain, but in the posture and
guise of worshippers (that is, kneeling), and in the midst of glorious
thoughts and speculations, did Mary bring her Son into the world."

We must seek for the accessories and circumstances usually introduced
by the painters in the old legendary traditions then accepted and
believed. (Protevangelion, xiv.) Thus one legend relates that
Joseph went to seek a midwife, and met a woman coming down from the
mountains, with whom he returned to the stable. But when they entered
it was filled with light greater than the sun at noonday; and as the
light decreased and they were able to open their eyes, they beheld
Mary sitting there with her Infant at her bosom. And the Hebrew woman
being amazed said, "Can this be true?" and Mary answered, "It is true;
as there is no child like unto my son, so there is no woman like unto
his mother."

* * * * *

These circumstances we find in some of the early representations,
more or less modified by the taste of the artist. I have seen, for
instance, an old German print, in which the Virgin "in the posture
and guise of worshippers," kneels before her Child as usual; while the
background exhibits a hilly country, and Joseph with a lantern in his
hand is helping a woman over a stile. Sometimes there are two women,
and then the second is always Mary Salome, who, according to a passage
in the same popular authority, visited the mother in her hour of
travail.

The angelic choristers in the sky, or upon the roof of the stable,
sing the _Gloria in excelsis Deo_; they are never, I believe, omitted,
and in early pictures are always three in number; but in later
pictures, the mystic _three_ become a chorus of musicians Joseph is
generally sitting by, leaning on hi