The Adoration of the Magi

The Adoration of the Magi, painted in 1487 and now at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, is one of Ghirlandaio's most ambitious panel paintings—an elaborate, multi-figure composition in which the three Wise Men with their retinue approach the Holy Family in a setting that combines classical ruins with the Florentine landscape. The classical architectural fragments in the background—ruined arches and columns—had become a standard convention in Florentine Adoration imagery by this date, symbolising the end of the pagan world and the beginning of the Christian era. Ghirlandaio includes portrait heads of contemporary Florentines among the retinue, a practice he had perfected in his fresco cycles.

Ghirlandaio's compositional management of a large, processional subject shows full maturity here: a clear recession through the figure groups toward a distant landscape, the Holy Family calm at the far end of the compositional movement, and the varied poses of the retinue displaying his workshop's command of figure drawing. Tempera or oil colours are bright and clearly differentiated.