The Adoration of the Magi

The stable here is no humble shed. Botticelli set the Holy Family inside the shell of a crumbling Roman building, with broken columns, cracked stone and a fresh wooden roof braced overhead like scaffolding. That was a deliberate idea: the old pagan world falling apart while something new takes root inside it. The three kings kneel in a wide arc around Mary and the Christ Child, their retinue spilling out to both sides in silks of rose, blue and gold, with restless horses and grooms crowding the right edge. Painted in Florence around 1478 to 1482, it shows the elegant line and pale, clear color that made Botticelli one of the most sought-after painters of his day, though many scholars think a workshop hand, possibly the young Filippino Lippi, finished parts of it.

The wide, low shape of the panel suggests it was made for a piece of furniture or a wall panel in a private home rather than an altar, which explains why the scene reads almost like a procession unrolling sideways. Botticelli returned to this subject again and again, and Florentine families loved it because the Magi gave them an excuse to appear in fashionable clothes among the holy figures. This particular version had an unexpected journey: it hung in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg until the Soviet government quietly sold it in 1931 to the American banker Andrew Mellon, who later gave it to the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Worth finding: the older king who has removed his crown and set it on the ground beside him, a small gesture of humility in a picture otherwise full of finery.