Adoration of the Magi

Leonardo da Vinci's Adoration of the Magi, begun in 1481 and now in the Uffizi, Florence, is one of the most famous unfinished paintings in art history. Commissioned by the Augustinian monks of San Donato a Scopeto, Leonardo abandoned the work when he left for Milan in 1482. The revolutionary composition—with its swirling crowd of figures, rearing horses, and atmospheric perspective—breaks completely from the orderly processional Adorations of his predecessors. The brown underpainting reveals Leonardo's working methods.

The unfinished state reveals Leonardo's revolutionary compositional process, with the brown monochrome underpainting showing his dynamic figure groupings, atmospheric chiaroscuro, and the sweeping spatial ambition that no previous Adoration had attempted.