The Adoration of the Magi

This small panel, barely 60 centimetres wide, was never meant to stand alone. In 1495 the Benedictine monks of San Pietro in Perugia commissioned Perugino for a towering altarpiece, and this Adoration was one of the little scenes running along its base, where a worshipper's eye would fall. Perugino was then about the most sought-after painter in Italy, with workshops in two cities and, some believe, a young Raphael learning at his side. Three centuries later French troops under Napoleon stripped the altarpiece from the church and carried its parts to France. The great panels went home eventually. Three of the predella scenes stayed, and that is why an Umbrian nativity now hangs in Rouen. The gold-lit hills behind the kings are the calm, even distances Perugino painted all his life.