Adoration of the Magi

Around 1475 a Florentine broker named Gaspare del Lama wanted a chapel altarpiece in Santa Maria Novella, and he asked Botticelli for an Adoration of the Magi. What he got was also a piece of careful flattery. The three kings kneeling before the Christ Child are widely read as members of the Medici family, the men who effectively ran the city. The oldest king, at the Virgin's feet, is usually identified as Cosimo de' Medici, with his sons and grandsons Lorenzo and Giuliano placed among the crowd. Del Lama, an outsider hoping to rise, had himself painted in too, an older man in blue on the right who looks straight out at us. The young man in yellow at the far edge, meeting your eye, is thought to be Botticelli.