It belonged to Señora O. Yturbe of Madrid, who sold it in 1930 to Franz M. Zatzenstein, founder of the Matthiesen Gallery in Berlin. That April, the Duveen Brothers, less affected by the 1929 stock market crash than other dealers, paid Zatzenstein £30,000, in cash, for the painting and sold it immediately to Mellon. A dealer usually had to go through the lengthy process of sending photographs of a painting via trans-Atlantic ship to an American buyer and then wait for a reply; the transaction for the "Nativity" is exceptional because it is the first painting of which the photograph was wired via Marconi cable from England to America. To avoid the export fees due if the painting been sent directly to New York, the Duveens took a circuitous route – from Madrid to Germany, then to Paris and America. In 1936 it was acquired by the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, and gifted to the National Gallery a year later.