Triptych of the Adoration of the Magi

By 1530, when this triptych was painted, Jan van Eyck had been dead for nearly 90 years, and Flemish painting had moved on to newer fashions coming out of Antwerp. The anonymous hand behind these three panels still worked in the old Eyckian manner though, the jewel-bright colour and the patient, almost microscopic detail that had made van Eyck famous a lifetime before. The subject is the Adoration of the Magi, the three kings arriving to honour the newborn Christ, their procession spread across the side wings so that it seems to move inward toward the central panel. The Uffizi records it not as van Eyck's own work but as a product of his school, painted almost a hundred years after his death.