The Adoration of the Magi

The Prado knows less about this canvas than about most of its Titians, and says so. Its record gives no year at all, only the 16th century, and no catalogue essay. The first firm trace is an 1818 inventory of the royal palace at Aranjuez, where it is listed among the pictures with nowhere to hang. The composition itself is well known. Titian and his workshop repeated this Adoration several times around 1560, and the surviving versions, at the Escorial, in Milan and in Cleveland, have kept specialists busy deciding how much of each is his own hand. This one, a canvas 219 centimetres across, is usually counted among the workshop pictures, though the museum still lists Titian as its author. It is not on display.