Adoration of the Magi

Andrea Sabbatini's Adoration of the Magi, painted around 1513 and now at the Picture Gallery of the Girolamini in Naples, is a work of the Neapolitan Renaissance by one of the most important painters of the southern Italian school in the early sixteenth century. Sabbatini, known as Andrea da Salerno, trained in Raphael's Roman workshop and returned to Naples bringing the High Renaissance idiom to a city that had previously been dominated by Flemish influence through the Aragonese court. The Adoration of the Magi, with its requirement for exotic costumes and elaborate compositional choreography, was an ideal vehicle for demonstrating the new classicizing style.

Raphaelesque influence is clear in the harmonious composition and idealized figure types — the result of direct training in Rome. The warm Neapolitan palette and the organization of the kneeling Magi before the Madonna and Child reflect the High Renaissance synthesis Sabbatini brought back to the south.