Artwork story
About The Adoration of the Magi
The artist and artwork
Giotto di Bondone painted The Adoration of the Magi, possibly around 1320, in tempera on a wood panel with a gold ground. The square picture combines the Magi's visit in the foreground with the Annunciation to the Shepherds above and behind the stable. It belonged to a series of scenes from the life of Christ, six others of which are known. The Met credits Giotto while acknowledging workshop participation: Giotto likely designed the composition and painted principal figures, with assistants contributing smaller passages.
The world around it
Giotto worked when Italian painting was changing decisively. Bright gold-ground panels still carried centuries of Byzantine visual tradition, but he made figures feel weighty, emotionally responsive, and able to occupy measurable space. His fame was exceptional in his lifetime: Dante recognized him as the leading painter of the day, and later writers Boccaccio and Petrarch praised his work. Major patrons employed him in Padua, Rome, Naples, Florence, and Milan. To meet such demand he directed a large workshop. Portable religious images still required laborious collective craft as pupils prepared wooden planks with size, linen, and gesso before gilding and painting them in egg tempera.
A detail to notice
The scene is organized like a tiny stepped theater. Goats and sheep occupy the lowest foreground; the manger, ox, and ass stand above them; the Virgin reclines inside a stable seen slightly from below; shepherds receive the angelic message on a notional plateau behind it. The oldest king has removed his crown, now lying near the animals, and reaches into the manger to lift the infant Christ, whose body stretches toward him while Mary watches with a concerned expression. Even the materials hold a surprise. The gold leaf was laid over an unusual pale-green preparation rather than the customary red. The comet-like star now above the roof has a modern tail; traces of the original star survive nearby.
Look closer: materials, scale, and subjects
The recorded object is painting made in Tempera on wood, gold ground and held in the European Paintings department.
Recorded dimensions include 17 3/4 x 17 1/4 in. (45.1 x 43.8 cm).
Subject terms include Animals, Angels, Jesus, and Adoration of the Magi. Treat them as guideposts, not a complete interpretation.
Collection history and public-domain source
The collection credit line is John Stewart Kennedy Fund, 1911.
The individual artwork page and official image were verified as Public Domain on 2026-08-23.
No Context Gallery independently uses the public-domain image. The source museum has not endorsed, sponsored, or affiliated itself with these products.
Research sources
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