An artist of considerable intellectual accomplishment and a friend of Galileo, Cigoli was the key artist in Florence in the late sixteenth century. Like his contemporaries, Ludovico and Annibale Carracci in Bologna and Caravaggio in Rome, he rebelled against the Mannerist style, emphasizing the study of nature together with the work of the masters of the High Renaissance. The Adoration of the Shepherds was painted at the height of Cigoli's career and introduces into Florentine painting the emotional warmth of Barocci's finest work, the fused color of the late Titian, and details taken directly from nature, such as the still life around the Christ Child and the rustic figures at the right.

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