For fifty-four years  the Metropolitan Museum has been adorning the base of its holiday tree with an eighteenth-century Neapolitan creche But  when it comes to the works in the museum’s collection  the Nativity has inspired a lot more than tree trimming—from Hans Memling’s fifteenth-century Netherlandish masterpiece “The Annunication” to the “Epiphany” painted  circa 1320  by Giotto  who is widely considered the first artist of the Italian Renaissance