The Adoration of the Magi

The Adoration of the Magi by Bartolomeo di Giovanni, housed at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and dated to around 1490, depicts the three Wise Men presenting their gifts before the newborn Christ in a composition that blends biblical narrative with Renaissance pageantry. The Epiphany was among the most elaborate sacred subjects in Italian Renaissance painting, partly because the rich costumes and exotic retinues of the Magi provided an opportunity to display wealth and painterly skill simultaneously. Bartolomeo, associated with Ghirlandaio's circle, gives his Magi rich brocaded robes and surrounds them with a crowd of attendants that reflects the Florentine tradition of treating the subject as a procession through the city streets.

The San Francisco panel uses a triangular compositional structure with the Holy Family at the apex and the kneeling Magi spread along the base. Bartolomeo's characteristically confident figure draughtsmanship is visible in the varied poses of the attendants at the panel's edges. The architectural ruins in the background — a standard motif signifying the decay of the Old Dispensation before Christ — are rendered with selective detail.