Adoration of the Magi

Painters had long found ways to slip themselves into an Adoration of the Magi. In Florence in the 1470s Sandro Botticelli painted himself at the edge of the crowd around the Holy Family, wrapped in a yellow cloak and looking straight out of the picture. Alessandro Turchi does something similar here. Among the Magi bowing low before the Child, a half-hidden figure pushes his head into the group and looks at us, and the museum considers him almost certainly the painter himself.

The museum calls the canvas one of his youthful masterpieces, painted early in the 17th century. Much later he returned to the subject in a version that is also by his hand but far less vigorous. Here the colour is fresh and daring, built mostly on ringing notes of red. Where the picture first hung is uncertain. The museum names an oratory dedicated to Saint Joseph, either in Verona or at Montorio just outside the city, and puts a question mark after each.