Sandro Botticelli, 'The Adoration of the Kings', about 1470-5

The Adoration of the Kings

Sandro Botticelli

Not on display

About the work

Overview

Botticelli painted at least six scenes of the Adoration of the Kings. This, one of his most expansive and ambitious, is painted in a circular format called a tondo. The figures and animals in the outer circle face inwards to pay respect to the Christ Child, inviting the viewer to do the same. Botticelli has raised the Virgin and Child upon a natural rocky platform, ensuring the viewer looks up towards them in reverence.

A makeshift roof has been inserted within the central arch so that it doubles as the humble stable where Christ was born. Crumbling classical architecture was a common feature in religious paintings in the Renaissance period, symbolising how Christianity had surpassed pagan religion and culture.

The picture may have belonged to the Pucci, a Florentine family. It might have been a tribute to the ruling Medici family, who identified strongly with the kings and owned two very large and elaborate paintings of the subject themselves.

In-depth

This is one of at least six scenes of the Adoration of the Kings painted by Botticelli. One of his most expansive and ambitious, it addresses the challenges of painting in a circular format called a tondo. Often elaborately framed, tondi were regarded as the most lavish type of picture.

The Adoration was an extremely popular subject in Florence, as the event was celebrated with great pomp and splendour at the feast of Epiphany – there were even processions through the city streets. Earlier depictions by Botticelli (such as a panel he made with Filippino Lippi) are rectangular, reflecting the movement of the procession towards the infant Christ. Later, pictures showing the holy family at the centre, as here, became more common.

In this painting the procession converges upon the holy figures from both sides, emphasising the symmetry of the work. There are two layers of the entourage, with the outer circle arranged as a semicircle around the lower edge of the picture. Most of the figures and animals face inwards to pay respect to the Christ Child, inviting the viewer to do the same. The inner circle is separated from this group, raised up on a natural rocky platform with the Virgin Mary and infant Christ. Although further back than the foreground figures, and therefore smaller, Botticelli has ensured that the viewer looks up towards them in reverence. The king kneeling deeply in front of the Virgin and Child shows the degree of respect we ought to pay them, as well as offering us a clear view of Christ.

This careful and complex arrangement of the figures, who nonetheless appear to be gathered in natural groups, contrasts with the more obvious and striking compositional device at the centre of the image: the lofty ruined arches of a once imposing piece of classical building. A makeshift roof has been inserted within the central arch so that it doubles as the humble stable in which Christ was born. Crumbling classical architecture was a common feature in religious paintings in the Renaissance period; it fed an elite intellectual taste for classical antiquity and also delivered a message about how Christianity had surpassed pagan religion and culture (note how the keystone of the central arch has become dislodged). Likewise, the enormous peacock perching on a fragment of marble symbolises the eternity of the soul, made possible through the incarnation of God in Christ.

The picture may be that seen by Vasari, the sixteenth-century biographer of the artists, in the house of the Florentine Pucci family, who commissioned The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian from Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo. It might have been a tribute to the ruling Medici family, who identified strongly with the magi and owned two very large and elaborate paintings of the subject themselves.

Key facts

Details

Full title: The Adoration of the Kings
Artist: Sandro Botticelli
Artist dates: about 1445 - 1510
Date made: about 1470-5
Medium and support: egg tempera on wood
Dimensions: 130.8 × 130.8 cm
Acquisition credit: Bought, 1878
Inventory number: NG1033
Location: Not on display
Collection: Main Collection
Previous owners: William Coningham

William Fuller Maitland
Frame: 20th-century Replica Frame

Provenance

Possibly the tondo of the Epiphany mentioned by Vasari in Casa Pucci at Florence. No. 1033 was in the Guicciardini Palace at Florence in 1807, and was sold in 1810, apparently to Dubois; it appeared in the William Coningham Sale, 9 June, 1849 (lot 38), bought by Coningham. In the Collection of W. Fuller Maitland at Stansted Hall, where seen by Waagen. Exhibited at the R.A., 1872 (No. 217). Stansted Hall Catalogue, 1872, p. 13. Purchased from W. Fuller Maitland, 1878.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Martin Davies, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Earlier Italian Schools’, London 1986; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2014

Building the Picture: Architecture in Italian Renaissance Painting

The National Gallery (London)

30 April 2014 - 21 September 2014

Bibliography

1854

G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain: Being and Account of the Chief Collections of Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Illuminated Mss. […], vol. 2, trans. E. Eastlake, London 1854
1872

W.F. Maitland, Catalogue of Pictures at Stansted Hall, n.p. 1872
1878

G. Vasari, Le vite de'più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori: Con nuove annotazioni e commenti di Gaetano Milanesi, ed. G. Milanesi, 8 vols, Florence 1878
1883

G. Morelli, Italian Masters in German Galleries, London 1883
1893

H.C. Ulmann, Sandro Botticelli, Munich 1893
1898

J.P. Richter, Lectures on the National Gallery, London 1898
1903

J.A. Crowe and G.B. Cavalcaselle, A History of Painting in Italy, Umbria, Florence and Siena, from the Second to the Sixteenth Century, ed. R.L. Douglas, 2nd edn, 6 vols, London 1903
1908

H. Horne, Allessandro Filipepi, Commonly Called Sandro Botticelli, Painter of Florence, London 1908
1908

P. Konody, 'On an Unknown Portrait of Botticelli and Some Dates', The Connoisseur, 1908
1923

R. van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, 19 vols, The Hague 1923
1951

Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: The Earlier Italian Schools, London 1951
1958

R. Salvini, Tutta la pittura del Botticelli, Milan 1958
1961

M. Davies, The Earlier Italian Schools, 2nd edn, London 1961
1970

R. Hatfield, 'The compagnia de Magi', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XXXIII, 1970, pp. 107-61
1976

R. Hatfield, Botticelli's Uffizi 'Adoration': A Study in Pictorial Content, Princeton 1976
1978

R. Lightbown, Sandro Botticelli, London 1978
1978

R.J.M. Olson, 'Botticelli's Horsetamer: A Quotation from Antiquity Which Reaffirms a Roman Date for the Washington Adoration', Studies in the History of Art, VIII, 1978, pp. 7-21
1983

L.C. Vegas, Italie et Flandres dans la peinture du XVe siècle, Milan 1983
1984

R. Salvini, Banchieri fiorentini e pittori di Fiandra, Modena 1984
1986

Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: The Earlier Italian Schools, revised edn, London 1986
1989

R. Lightbown, Sandro Botticelli: Life and Work, 2nd edn, London 1989
1990

C. Caneva, Botticelli: Catalogo completo dei dipinti, Florence 1990
1991

J. Dunkerton et al., Giotto to Dürer: Early Renaissance Painting in the National Gallery, New Haven 1991
1991

D. Thiébaut, Botticelli, Paris 1991
1991

F. Haskell, 'William Coningham and His Collection of Old Masters', The Burlington Magazine, CXXXIII/1063, 1991, pp. 676-81
1995

D. Lee, William Fuller Maitland 1813-1876, n.p. 1995?
1995

P. Joannides, 'Late Botticelli: Archaism and Ideology', Arte Cristiana, LXXXIII/768, 1995, pp. 163-78
1999

P.L. Rubin and A. Wright, Renaissance Florence: The Art of the 1470s, (exh. cat. The National Gallery, 20 October 1999 - 19 January 2000), London 1999
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
2003

H. Secherre, 'The Dubois and Fauchet Collections: The Connoisseurship of Italian Primitives in Paris at the Time of the First Empire', Apollo, 2003, pp. 21-31
2005

A. Cecchi, Botticelli, Milan 2005
2006

H. Körner, Botticelli, Cologne 2006

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

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