Girolamo da Treviso, 'The Adoration of the Kings', about 1523-4

A great throng of retainers and animals accompany the Three Kings to pay homage to the infant Christ. Reclining among angels in the heavens, God the Father blesses all those below.

Fragments of a ruined classical building – perhaps a city gate or triumphal arch – are scattered in the foreground, and the Virgin Mary sits on the upside-down capital of a column. Ruined classical architecture is often included in Renaissance paintings of the Nativity to symbolise the end of the old pagan world and the dawn of the new Christian era. Paradoxically the architecture here is of a type that Italian Renaissance architects wished to revive, and this structure has much in common with the proposals by Antonio da Sangallo for the new St Peter’s Basilica being built at that time in Rome.

The massive piers of the central ruin divide the composition into three parts, each with a path winding into the distance, along which the retinues of the Three Kings progress. The star that guided the kings is visible above the treetops to the left of centre. On top of the cliff in the distance we see an angel in the sky announcing the news of Christ’s birth to the shepherds; two shepherds with a dog walk down the stepped track towards the holy family.

The Virgin holds the infant Christ, who blesses the eldest king prostrated before him and receives the gold he offers. The next king has taken off his crown and kneels in respect. The third, dark-skinned king takes from an attendant the large golden urn of myrrh he will present to Christ. Joseph stands in the shadows behind the Virgin.

This painting is based on a drawing by Baldassare Peruzzi made in Bologna in about 1522 for Count Battista Bentivoglio, which is now in the British Museum, London. Vasari described the drawing in his Lives of the Artists, adding that the Count gave it to be coloured by Girolamo da Treviso. This painting is not necessarily the one Vasari referred to, but infrared reflectograms show a simple linear underdrawing below the paint, which was probably made from a cartoon or cartoons.

Peruzzi was an architect as well as an artist, and architecture plays an important role in this composition. The three distant arches act as focal points for the procession, directing its flow down towards the figure of the Virgin under the central arch. Contemporary viewers would have been familiar with the triumphal arch as a means of dignifying and directing a procession of distinguished people. Triumphal arches were a prominent part of the elaborate temporary architecture erected for Pope Leo X’s visit to Florence on 15 November 1515, a project with which Peruzzi himself was involved. The depiction of the Castel Sant’Angelo (the mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian, built AD 123–139 in Rome) at the far right of Girolamo’s painting is a further reminder of Peruzzi’s role in the Pope’s triumphal entry into Florence, as a large model resembling it was created for this event.

The starting point for the central group in Peruzzi’s drawing (and this painting) was a tapestry design made in Raphael’s workshop in about 1519. The tapestry cartoon and Peruzzi’s drawing also influenced The Adoration of the Kings by Girolamo da Carpi.