The Adoration of the Magi

Bartolo di Fredi

ca. 1390 · Tempera and gold on wood · Robert Lehman Collection

Bartolo di Fredi was the most important painter in Siena in the second half of the fourteenth century. Accommodating the vertical composition, the overlapping figures of servants, kings, and horses are densely assembled around the Virgin and Child. The panel, which has been truncated at the top, originally included the procession of the Magi in the upper zone (a fragment of which is preserved in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon). Two headless camels and the legs of two attendants and a dog in the upper left corner offer evidence of the once amplified narrative.

Artist

Bartolo di Fredi

Date

ca. 1390

Medium

Tempera and gold on wood

Department

Robert Lehman Collection

Credit line

Robert Lehman Collection, 1975