Adoration of the Magi

This is early Correggio, painted around 1515 before he moved to Parma and made his name with the soft, melting light of his later work. He was in his mid-twenties, still in the small northern Italian town of Correggio that gave him his name, absorbing what he could from Leonardo and from Mantegna nearby. The subject is the moment the three kings reach the newborn Christ, the eldest already kneeling to offer his gift while a servant presses in behind with the others. You can already sense what Correggio would be loved for, the tender turn of the faces and light that seems to fall of its own accord rather than being placed. For a long time nobody knew it was his. It entered this Milan gallery under another painter's name, and was recognised as a Correggio only later.