The Adoration of the Magi

This Adoration of the Magi, more than two metres wide, was once the centre of a folding altarpiece whose wings are now divided between two other cities. The German art historian Max J. Friedländer proposed the reconstruction. The upper halves of the wings, with scenes from the lives of Saint Catherine and Saint Agnes, hang in the Palazzo Reale in Genoa. The lower halves, with the two saints' martyrdoms, are in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg.

The split began with the Durazzo, the Genoese patrician family who owned the ensemble and sold the lower halves at the end of the 18th century. The rest stayed in Genoa, in the family palace that the House of Savoy bought in the 1820s, and in 1837 the central panel was moved to the royal picture gallery that King Charles Albert had founded in Turin five years earlier.

Not everyone accepts that the pieces belong together, and some scholars give the Genoa panels to a separate anonymous painter. The Galleria Sabauda dates the Adoration to the late 15th century, and records an alternative dating of about 1500 to 1520.