The Adoration of the Magi

c. 1450

Giovanni di Paolo

Painter, Sienese, c. 1403 - 1482

Three men with crowns and wearing gold-trimmed robes stand and kneel before a woman sitting on a wooden, box-like seat holding a baby to our right, in front of a rocky cave and landscape, in this horizontal painting. A balding man with a gray beard and hair, Joseph, and two younger people with blond hair stand around the woman, Mary, to our right, while a group of five young men or boys and three horses gather near the left edge. All the people have pale skin. Mary, the baby Jesus, Joseph, and the three men closest to them all have shimmering gold halos. One balding man with a long white beard kneels and kisses the baby’s feet. He wears a gold and crimson-red brocade-like robe over a burgundy-red garment, and he holds a pointed gold crown in his right hand, which rests on the ground. Behind him and to our left, a younger man with curly blond hair and goatee, wearing a wine-red tunic belted with gold and a gold crown on his head, holds his hands in prayer as he kneels down on one knee. The third stands to our left, cleanshaven with long blond hair. He wears a fur-lined, thigh-length scarlet-red robe and a gold crown, and he holds up a gold vessel in one hand. To our right, Mary wears a lapis-blue robe that covers her head and falls to her feet. The baby is covered only by a white cloth across his hips, and he has short blond hair. He touches the kneeling man’s head with one hand. His body is pudgy but his face has more adult-like, delicate features. Joseph stands at the woman’s far shoulder, wearing a butter-yellow robe over a rose-pink garment. His hands are gathered on a walking stick in front of his chest and his brows are furrowed with deep lines. One of the two younger people behind Mary, to our right, holds a lidded gold vessel. The group of five attendants to our left gather around cream-white, gray, or chestnut-brown horses. These blond people wear garments of dark olive-green, coral-red, royal-blue, or rose-pink tunics over black stockings. The rocky, brown cave behind Mary and Jesus, to our right of center, is occupied by a donkey and an ox behind a wooden trough. The landscape beyond is segmented into quilt-like squares of stylized crops. The horizon line comes almost to the top edge of the panel beneath a narrow strip of vivid, cobalt-blue sky. A gold star like a sunburst with rays of light hovers over the woman and child.

Media Options

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 3

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    tempera on panel

  • Credit Line

    Andrew W. Mellon Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 26.9 x 46.4 cm (10 9/16 x 18 1/4 in.)
    framed: 35.9 x 56.4 x 5.2 cm (14 1/8 x 22 3/16 x 2 1/16 in.)

  • Accession

    1937.1.13

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

John Rushout, 6th bt. and 2nd baron Northwick [1770-1859], Northwick Park, near near Moreton-in-the-Marsh, originally Worcestershire, now Gloucestershire, and Thirlestane House, near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire;[1] (his estate sale, Phillips, at Thirlestane House, 26 July-30 August 1859, 10th day [10 August], no. 973, as The Adoration of the Kings by Gentile da Fabriano); (Daniell, London);[2] sold to William Fuller Maitland [1813-1876], Stansted Hall, Stansted, Essex;[3] by inheritance to his son, William Fuller Maitland [1844-1932], Stansted Hall; sold after 1893 to (Robert Langton Douglas, London);[4] Dr. Eduard Simon [1864-1929], Berlin, by 1914;[5] (his estate sale, Cassirer and Helbing, Berlin, 11 October 1929, no. 3); (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris);[6] purchased 15 December 1936 by The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh;[7] gift 1937 to NGA.
[1] On this collection see Frank Herrmann, The English as Collector. A Documentary Chrestomathy, London, 1972: 320-326, and Oliver Bradbury and Nicholas Penny, "The picture collecting of Lord Northwick: Part I and Part II," Burlington Magazine (August and October 2002): 485-496 and 606-617. The fact that Gustav Friedrich Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, 3 vols., London, 1854: 3:195-212, does not mention the painting in describing his visit to Thirlestane House does not mean that it was not there; in fact the eminent connoisseur could not make notes, as he himself informs us, of more than 200 of the some 800 pictures seen during his short stay.
[2] Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:222.
[3] Catalogue of Pictures at Stansted Hall, 1872: 8, as by Gentili [sic] da Fabriano. The painting is already cited by Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy, from the II to the XVI Century, 3 vols., London, 1864-1866: 3(1866):80 n. 6) as owned by Maitland. Not included in the sale of the collection on 10 May 1879 at Christie, Manson & Woods, London, it remained with the collector's son and heir.
[4] The painting is listed in the 1893 Catalogue of Pictures at Stansted Hall as number 17, by Gentili da Fabriano. See also Max J. Friedlander, Die Sammlung Dr. Eduard Simon, Berlin, 1929: 22, no. 3, and Denys Sutton, "Robert Langton Davis. Part 2," Apollo 109, no. 207 (May 1979): 373; according to Friedlander the painting was acquired by Douglas from "Stanstead [sic] House." See also letter from Douglas to Fowles dated 1 May 1941, Duveen Brothers Records, Box 244 (reel 299).
[5] The painting is described in the catalogue of the Berlin Ausstellung (1914, no. 123) as being in the Simon collection, on which see Barbara Paul, "Das Kollektionieren ist die edelste aller Leidenschaften," Kritische Berichte 21, no. 3 (1993): 51-53. The acquisition was probably a fairly recent one. Edward Hutton (in Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy..., 3rd ed., ed Edward Hutton, 3 vols, London and New York, 1908-1909: 3:126 n. 8) was unaware of it and erroneously identified the ex-Maitland Adoration as the one that during his time belonged to the collection of Richard von Kaufmann in Berlin (today in the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller in Otterlo). Tancred Borenius (in Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy..., 2nd ed., ed. Langton Douglas and Tancred Borenius, 6 vols., London, 1903-1914: 5(1914):176 n. 6) also did not know the whereabouts of the painting.
[6] Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 143, box 288, folder 1; copies in NGA curatorial files.
[7] The original invoice is in Gallery Archives, copy in NGA curatorial files.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1876

  • South Kensington Museum, London, 1876 (according to the Duveen prospectus, in NGA curatorial files).

1914

  • Ausstellung von Werken Alter Kunst aus dem Privatbesitz von Mitgliedern des Kaiser-Friedrich-Museums-Vereins, Königlichen Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 1914, no. 123.

2005

  • Masterpieces in Miniature: Italian Manuscript Illumination from the J. Paul Getty Museum, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2005-2006, not in brochure.

Bibliography

1937

  • Cortissoz, Royal. An Introduction to the Mellon Collection. Boston, 1937: 13.

  • Pope-Hennessy, John. Giovanni di Paolo. London, 1937: 75, 80, 107 n. 41.

1938

  • Douglas, Robert Langton. “Review of John Pope-Hennessy, Giovanni di Paolo (1937).” The Burlington Magazine 72 (1938): 44.

1941

  • Duveen Brothers. Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America. New York, 1941: no. 39, repro.

  • Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 83-84, no. 13.

  • Richter, George Martin. "The New National Gallery in Washington." The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 78 (June 1941): 178.

1942

  • Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 239, repro. 118.

  • Francis, Henry S. “A New Giovanni di Paolo.” Art Quarterly 5 (1942): 321, fig. 9

1947

  • Brandi, Cesare. Giovanni di Paolo. Florence, 1947: 84 n. 68.

1949

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Mellon Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1949 (reprinted 1953 and 1958): 16, repro.

  • Brandi, Cesare. Quattrocentisti senesi. Milan, 1949: 261.

1957

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Comparisons in Art: A Companion to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. London, 1957 (reprinted 1959): 30, fig. 24.

1959

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Early Italian Painting in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1959 (Booklet Number Three in Ten Schools of Painting in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.): 20, color repro.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 59.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 51, repro.

  • Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Central and North Italian Schools, 3 vols. London, 1968: 1:182.

  • Ragghianti, Carlo, ed. National Gallery, Washington. New York, [1968]: 21, repro.

1972

  • Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, MA, 1972: 90, 645.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 154, repro.

1979

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:222-223, 2:pl. 150.

  • Watson, Ross. The National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1979: 22, pl. 6.

  • Sutton, Denys. "Robert Langton Douglas. Part II." Apollo 109 (May 1979): 373 [109], 375 [111] pl. X.

1982

  • Brigstocke, Hugh. "Lord Lindsay as a Collector." Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 64, no. 2 (1982): 332.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 80, no. 33, color repro.

  • The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1984: 27.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 177, repro.

1988

  • Christiansen, Keith, Laurence B. Kanter, and Carl Brandon Strehlke, eds. Painting in Renaissance Siena 1420-1500. Exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1988: 209.

1989

  • Os, Hendrik W. van, J. R. J. van Asperen de Boer, C. E. de Jong-Janssen, and Charlotte Wiefhoff, eds. The Early Sienese Paintings in Holland. Translated by Michael Hoyle. Florence, 1989: 71.

1992

  • De Marchi, Andrea. Gentile da Fabriano: Un viaggio nella pittura italiana alla fine del gotico. Milan, 1992: 211 n. 33.

1996

  • Wilson, Carolyn C. Italian Paintings XIV-XVI Centuries in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Houston, 1996: 168.

2003

  • Boskovits, Miklós, David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 2003: 333-337, color repro.

2013

  • Walmsley, Elizabeth. "Italian Renaissance Paintings Restored in Paris by Duveen Brothers, Inc., c. 1927-1929." Facture: conservation, science, art history 1 (2013): 58-77, figs. 5, 6.

Wikidata ID

Q20173683

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