Polidoro da Lanciano

The Adoration of the Magi

Artist
Polidoro da Lanciano
( Lanciano (Abruzzi), 1515-Venice, 1565 )

Details
Oil on canvas 61.4×77 cm

Description
This Adoration of the Magi was no doubtintended for private devotion. The Holy Family is set againstthe ruins of a building in an idyllic landscape. Drawn to Bethlehem by the star, depicted symbolicallyabove the Holy Family, the three Kings pay homage to the Saviour. The oldest, Caspar, humbly offershis gift to the Child; Melchior kneels behind him; and the Moorish Balthazar stands over them, hispink cape caught by the wind.The first two Magi resemble donor figures in typical early Sacre Conversazioni by Titian or, indeed,by Polidoro himself such as the little-known Holy Family with Two Donors (fig. 1; Notre Dame, Indiana,The Snite Museum of Art, 57.64). (1)The lively pose of the Christ Child reappears in the Snite canvas and reflects a popular motif derivedfrom Titian through whose workshop Polidoro may have passed. Our young bearded King could be abrother of the foremost donor in the Snite painting, the image of a young Venetian patrician in theearly Cinquecento. In its conception, our Adoration also looks to similar paintings by BonifazioVeronese such as his Sacra Conversazione of ca. 1526/27 (San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums). (2)The scene is set in a breezy landscape reminiscent of Northern Italy. The first two Kings’ attire iscertainly suited to a cool day in the Veneto, and their robes resemble those worn by donors inVenetian paintings of the period. The Virgin’s head is of a type which recurs especially in the paintingsof Savoldo, for example in his Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Private Collection) exhibited in the 1990Savoldo exhibition (3). Joseph’s head can be compared with that of Saint Anthony in Savoldo’s TheTemptation of Saint Anthony Abbot (San Diego, Timken Art Gallery), datable to the 1530s (4).The fluid, broad handling of paint in the drapery passages of our Adoration and the swift, smallstrokes that highlight the trees in the background are characteristic of Polidoro.1-Illustrated by Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Venetian school, London,1957, vol. II, pl. 1031 as formerly in the collection of Frank and Henry Farrer, london; see also ArtJournal, XXI, Summer 1962, p. 259 and fig. 5.2-See Simonetti, art. cit. in note 1, pp. 98 (no. 7) and 238.3-See exh. cat. cit. in note 1, pp.130-31, no. I.13.4-See Antonio Boschetto, Giovan Gerolamo Savoldo, Milan, 1963, pl. 18 (this picture was still inprivate hands at the time).