The Adoration of the Kings

This strip of wood, only 19 centimetres high, once sat at the foot of an altarpiece, and nobody now knows which one. It is probably by Zanobi Strozzi, painted around 1433 to 1434, and it tells the Epiphany at the scale of a book page. The first king has already made his offering, and Joseph stands holding it, a detail that seems to come from earlier Florentine paintings of the scene. The two other kings wait their turn. Their gifts sit in gilded boxes under transparent veils, a way of marking them as sacred. Behind them crowd their attendants, and two pages hold back the horses. The meadow below them is full of tiny flowers and grasses, some of which look like daisies. Gold patterns run over the robes, the kind of close work usually found in illuminated manuscripts.