L'Adoration des mages

In 1481 the monks of San Donato, just outside Florence, gave the young Leonardo a big commission for their altar. He drew and underpainted furiously, then in 1482 he packed up and left for Milan and the court of Ludovico Sforza, and he never came back to finish it. So what survives is a painting caught mid-thought. The Virgin and Child sit at the centre, calm, while a whole crowd swirls around them in brown underpaint, some figures barely sketched, some almost modelled, hands and faces reaching and reacting. Behind them, ghostly, you can make out ruined architecture and horsemen fighting, worked out in the same ground tones. The monks eventually gave up waiting and handed the job to another painter, Filippino Lippi. Leonardo's unfinished version has hung in the Uffizi since 1670.