the magi
January 6, 2020
The image is a fragment from Gentile da Fabriano’s Adoration of the Magi.
The altarpiece is housed at the Uffizi.
I like the palette – the golds, the dark-blues, the yellows, the rich browns. But the fact that the Magi look like Renaissance Florentines, in extravagant dress, just heightens my disdain of the 1%ers and my antipathy for Holy Mother Church.
The little boy, in the blue top and bending under the skirt of the third king, is removing the regent’s spurs. Don’t we all want a lackey following us around and bending to remove unnecessary accouterments when we’re on our way to an important meeting?
And spurs can be so inconvenient and never mind how long I had to wait for that jeweler to make me something that matched the hose I had picked out for the meeting with them Jewish peasants.
The falconer behind the third king and above the little boy is Palla Strozzi who commissioned the altarpiece; and the young man on his right is his son Lorenzo.
Palla Strozzi was heard whinnying to a local TV anchor that he had no choice but to commission the painting, because his fellow Florentines didn’t believe that he was there in Bethlehem with the Three Kings.
And let’s not forget the two women behind The Virgin examining the gift presented by the kneeling king.
“Buff, it’s only gold-plated. It must be a re-gift.”
“Muff, they’re foreigners.”
In the 15th century, Palla Strozzi, one of the richest man in early Renaissance Florence, commissioned Gentile da Fabriano to paint the altarpiece for his family church of Santa Trinita.