The Adoration of the Magi

Around 1580, when Scarsellino painted this canvas, Ferrara was still the capital of a duchy ruled by the Este family, with a court that drew writers and artists. That world ended within a generation. Duke Alfonso II died in 1597 without a legitimate heir, and early the next year Pope Clement VIII reclaimed the city for the Papal States, in a handover negotiated by his nephew, Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini. The Este withdrew to Modena.

Aldobrandini also acquired the collection of Lucrezia d'Este, the late duke's sister, and over the following decades many of Ferrara's pictures left for Rome, where cardinals and bankers were turning collecting into a fashion. Scarsellino stayed and worked on in Ferrara. This Adoration of the Magi is one of the Ferrarese paintings that ended up in a Roman house, that of the Sacchetti, Florentine bankers settled in the city, and it came to the Capitoline when their collection was bought for Rome in 1748.