Rossetti was commissioned to do a painting for the reredos of the High Altar in 1855. He was extremely slow in producing it and the whole painting was not finally delivered until 1864, much to the relief of the Dean and Chapter. Rossetti was very unhappy with its location (the light was all wrong) and its setting (white Caen stone). In the post-war restoration of the Cathedral, Pace did not wish to return to the Victorian arrangement of the Sanctuary, and so the painting was moved to the newly created Illtyd Chapel under the Jasper Tower. In 1989, Donald Buttress re-furbished the Chapel and chose to provide the painting with a new frame with the muted richness of distressed gold leaf. Both these changes may have gone some way to meeting Rossetti’s original objections.
At first sight, the painting appears to be a straight-forward depiction of the Nativity, but Rossetti declared that he was in fact presenting “a condensed symbol of it”. He sought to show that Christ was descended from rich and poor. He did this by emphasising Christ as the ultimate descendant of David, who is shown in the side panels as both poor shepherd boy and wealthy king. He also wanted to show that Christ was worshipped by rich and poor, and so he is depicted at his birth being worshipped by a king and a shepherd at the same time. Rossetti shows Christ offering his hand to the shepherd and his foot to the king to symbolise the superiority of poverty over wealth. Christ is also being worshipped by an angel – celestial beings as well as human.
When Rossetti was commissioned, the Pre-Raphaelite artists were still highly controversial. One of the reasons for this was their insistence on going back to a greater simplicity and realism in their paintings. One aspect of this was that, in their religious and historical paintings alike, they made use of real people as models rather than images drawn from antique sculpture or the art of the Renaissance. In the Llandaff Triptych, it is possible to identify the models for virtually all the figures and they include such well-known people as William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, Algernon Swinburne, Lizzie Siddal, Fanny Cornforth, and Jane Burden.