Adoration of the Magi

This is a large painting, almost three and a half metres wide, and much of it was not made by Bonifazio's own hand. It was painted in the late 1530s for a chamber of the magistracy that governed Venice's revenues, in the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi. Look at the Virgin and Child at the centre and you are seeing the master himself. The crowd of kings and attendants around them, and the wide backdrop of Dolomite mountains catching a late evening light, are largely the work of his assistants. Four family coats of arms in the lower left name the officials who probably ordered it. The canvas holds its story clear despite the crowd, the three kings arriving in procession to lay their gifts before the mother and child.