Adoration of the Magi (Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi)
The Adoration of the Magi is a tondo, or circular painting, of the Adoration of the Magi assumed to be that recorded in 1492 in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence as by Fra Angelico. It dates from the mid-15th century and is now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Most art historians think that Filippo Lippi painted more of the original work, and that it was added to some years after by other artists, as well as including work by assistants in the workshops of both the original masters. It has been known as the Washington Tondo and Cook Tondo after Herbert Cook, and this latter name in particular continues to be used over 50 years after the painting left the Cook collection.[1][2]
The tondo is painted in tempera on a wood panel, and the painted surface has a diameter of 137.3 cm (54 1/16 in.). The National Gallery of Art dates it to "c. 1440/1460".[3]
Art historians are agreed that the painting was produced over a considerable period, with significant changes in the composition, and contributions from a number of hands. While some are critical of the discordances this history has produced,[4] for John Walker, the second director of the National Gallery of Art, the result was
among the greatest Florentine paintings in the world. It is a climax of beauty, a summary in itself of the whole evolution of the Italian schools of painting in the first half of the fifteenth century. For it stands at a crossroad of art. The old style, the gay, colorful, fairy tale painting of the Middle Ages, is ending in an outburst of splendor; and the new style, scientific in observation, studious in anatomy and perspective, realistic in its portrayal of life, is beginning its long development.[5]
Description
The painting shows the three Magi or "kings" presenting their gifts to the infant Jesus, who is held by his mother. Saint Joseph stands beside her, and the manger, ox and ass of the usual depiction of the Nativity are behind this main group. Thus far the composition contains the inevitable components in a very standard arrangement.[6]
As very often, the subject has been combined with the Adoration of the Shepherds,[7] who are represented by three figures in ragged dress, one behind Joseph, and two at the right side of the stable building behind. Only the first of these is looking at Jesus and Mary, from an oblique angle almost behind them. Of the other two, the kneeling one points in the direction of the manger, well behind the sacred figures. The manger is placed outside the stable, and the ox and ass are also in the open air. The interior of the stable is occupied by what are presumably the Magi's horses and their grooms, removing their tack and in one case checking a horseshoe.[8]
Behind the magi on the left a large procession of their retinues continue to arrive, passing through an arch that is part of a large ruined structure. To the right of the main group the city walls of Bethlehem run up a steep slope, with a road or path running in front of the walls. Down this another large group, presumably more of the Magis' parties, is coming, riding on camels and horses.[9] A number of townsfolk have come out through a gateway in the walls, and are looking and pointing, in one case kneeling in prayer, but all looking in a different direction from the final location of the main figures.[10] At the top of the hill a large but indistinctly painted group form a crowd, perhaps funnelling down the narrow path.
On the top of the stable a large peacock perches, looking over his shoulder. There are two other birds to his right, which have been identified as a goshawk seizing a pheasant.[11] Though they look as though they too are on the roof they should be imagined as in flight in mid-air in front of it. This partly explains their discrepancy in scale with the two shepherds below them, though perhaps not entirely.
The painting is marked by several such discrepancies, to a degree that is somewhat surprising in a work of this date, and probably mostly explained by the spatial complexity of the composition, and the number of changes as it developed. The peacock's feet clearly grasp the end of a beam from the stable roof, but the bird is far too large compared to the figures and animals below him in the middle ground.[12] Another of the most obvious discrepancies in scale is around the arch to the left, between the size of the figures of the procession coming through the arch, and those of the locals and unmounted horses to the right of the arch. Who the nearly naked youths standing on the ruins are supposed to represent has puzzled art historians,[13] but their compositional function seems clearly to be to suggest a grander scale for the building than the procession through the arch would do. They also represent "an early indication of that preoccupation with human anatomy, which was to obsess Italian artists until it reached its climax with Michelangelo."[14]
Stages of painting
The painting as it now appears is believed to have developed in several stages. In the usual reconstruction, first advanced by
The whole stable has been described as "an awkward later addition", perhaps occupying a space once intended for the main figures,[17] and the peacock and other birds on the roof of the stable are painted over finished areas, rather than areas "reserved" as would be the case if they had been planned from the start. They appear to come from an even later phase of painting, and have been connected with emblems adopted by Cosimo de' Medici's sons Piero (1416–1469) and Giovanni (1421–1463). The former used a falcon holding a ring, with the motto "SEMPER" ("always" or "for ever" in Latin) and the latter a peacock with the motto "REGARDE-MOI" ("Watch me" in French).[18] Together with the dog on the grass at the bottom of the painting, they were perhaps added by Benozzo Gozzoli around the time he was working on the famous fresco cycle of the Magi Chapel in the Medici Palace in 1459–61. Gozzoli was a former member of Fra Angelico's workshop who by then ran his own studio. The chapel frescos also centre on elaborate processions of the Magi, and include several birds, and feathers, one of which is a goshawk, and another a peacock in a very similar pose to the one in the tondo.[19]
History
The painting has been generally identified with one recorded in an inventory of the contents of the Medici Palace made in 1492 after the death of
A large tondo with a gilt frame depicting our Lady and our Lord and the Magi who come to make an offering, from the hand of fra'Giovanni:
f. 100.[21]
From at least the late 16th century it belonged to the Florentine
Iconography and context
A high quality Florentine tondo featuring the Magi would be suspected of originating with a Medici commission even without the evidence of the inventory, as the family had a very particular interest in both the subject and the form. The Magi had been the key Medici devotion for decades, apparently beginning with the papacy of
The tondo shape for large paintings may itself have been a Medici innovation, possibly representing the gold ring with a diamond that became used as a device by the family from the 1440s.[25] The shape probably represents an inflation of the far smaller painted desco da parto or "birthing-tray", a decorated wooden tray, round or twelve-sided, that was traditionally presented by a Florentine husband to his wife after childbirth, and then used for serving refreshments to her visitors as she lay in state for a period of days after. The same 1492 inventory that probably records the tondo shows that Lorenzo de' Medici kept the desco da parto presented on his own birth in 1449 hanging on his bedroom wall until his death. These desci were typically decorated with allegorical or mythological scenes, while the large tondo was mostly used for religious subjects. But the shape was not found in paintings for churches, and may have carried a deliberate suggestion of a commission for a palace.[26]
Apart from the tondo being discussed, another with a loosely similar composition showing the Adoration of the Magi, by
A number of aspects of the arrangement of the figures and the general composition are probably borrowed from a Magi scene of about 1370–71 by Jacopo di Cione that was then part of his large altarpiece at the nearby church (now destroyed) of San Pier Maggiore.[29] The altarpiece is now dispersed, but the majority of the panels, including the Magi scene, are in the National Gallery, London.[30]
More general meanings that were attached to objects in the painting include the pomegranate held by the Christ child, whose many seeds were regarded as symbolizing the souls in the care of the church. The flesh of the peacock was thought to resist decay, and so the bird symbolized eternity, and the Resurrection of Jesus.[31]
The buildings to the rear
A grand but "crumbling pagan building" is a very common feature of Renaissance Nativity scenes, often acting as the stable itself. This generally represents the passing of the era of the
In the 15th century the "Temple of Peace" was wrongly identified with the
Notes
- ^ Catalog nr. 16 in "A catalogue of the paintings at Doughty House, Richmond, & elsewhere in the collection of Sir Frederick Cook, bt., Visconde de Monserrate, Vol. I Italian Schools", by Herbert Cook & Tancred Borenius, 1914
- ^ For example in 2005 by Kanter and Palladino, 282
- ^ NGA
- ^ Sale, 10–13; Kanter and Palladino, 282
- ^ Walker, 76
- ^ Schiller, 110–114; Palazzo Medici
- ^ Schiller, 114
- ^ Palazzo Medici
- ^ Palazzo Medici, though they say "On the extreme right is a walled city, where the straggling tail of the Magi's cortege is clambering up a steep path with their camels", when they are clearly coming down the slope.
- ^ Palazzo Medici; Kanter and Palladino, 282
- ^ Sale, 9
- ^ Sale, 9–10, 12
- ^ The NGA writes "The nudes standing on the walls remain mysterious. Perhaps they are people who were formerly outcasts but who are now brought into the welcoming fold of the new religion".
- ^ Walker, 76
- ^ Walker, 76; Cavallini to Veronese – Italian Renaissance Art, accessed 21 December 2014
- ^ NGA; Sale, 4–7; Kanter and Palladino, 282–283
- ^ Kanter and Palladino, 282–283, 283 quoted
- ^ Sale, 7–8
- ^ Sale, 7–13
- ^ NGA
- ^ Stapleford, 71
- ^ Walker, 41; Cavallini to Veronese – Italian Renaissance Art, accessed 21 December 2014
- ^ NGA Provenance; Palazzo Medici
- ^ Sale, 6–7; NGA
- ^ Sale, 6
- ^ NGA
- ^ Sale, 6–9
- ^ Sale, 6; NGA
- ^ Sale, 8
- ^ Davies, 48, 45–54
- ^ NGA
- ^ Lillie
- ^ Lillie
References
- Davies, Martin, revised by Gordon, Dillian, The Italian Schools before 1400, 1988, National Gallery Publications Ltd, ISBN 978-1-85709-918-8
- Kanter, Laurence B., Palladino, Pia, Fra Angelico, 2005, Metropolitan Museum of Art, ISBN 1-58839-174-4, 978-1-58839-174-2
- Lillie, Amanda, "Architectural Time Archived 2020-08-08 at the Wayback Machine", in Building the Picture: Architecture in Italian Renaissance Painting, published online 2014, The National Gallery, London, accessed 27 December 2014
- "NGA": National Gallery of Art, "highlights" page on the painting, accessed 21 December 2014
- "NGA Provenance": "Provenance", NGA
- "Palazzo Medici": Adoration of the Magi, by Fra’ Angelico and Filippo Lippi, Mediateca di Palazzo Medici Riccardi, accessed 21 December 2014
- Sale, J. Russell, Birds of a Feather: The Medici 'Adoration' Tondo in Washington, 2007, The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 149, No. 1246, Art in Italy (Jan., 2007), pp. 4–13, JSTOR
- Schiller, Gertud, Iconography of Christian Art, Vol. I, 1971 (English trans from German), Lund Humphries, London, ISBN 0-85331-270-2
- Stapleford, Richard, ed., Lorenzo De' Medici at Home: The Inventory of the Palazzo Medici in 1492, 2013, Penn State Press, ISBN 0-271-05641-X, 978-0-271-05641-8
- Walker, John, The National Gallery, Washington, Thames & Hudson, London, 1964.
Further reading
- Berenson, Bernard, "Postscript 1949: The Cook Tondo Revisited", reprinted in Homeless Paintings of the Renaissance, ed. Hanna Kiel, 1965.
- Berenson, Bernard, "Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo e la cronologia", 1932 Bollettino d'Arte, XXXVI (later translated into English)
- Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century, The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2003. Entry pp. 21–30.
- Ruda, Jeffrey. "The National Gallery Tondo of the Adoration of the Magi and the Early Style of Filippo Lippi." Studies in the History of Art vol. 7 (1975), pp. 6–39. Ruda is the only art historian to think Lippi began the work.
External links
- Media related to Adoration of the Magi tondo by Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi at Wikimedia Commons