L'Adoration des mages

This altarpiece was made for a very particular building. In 1485 the prior of Florence's foundling hospital, the place that took in abandoned and orphaned children, contracted Ghirlandaio to paint it, insisting in writing that the master do the work himself and use costly colours like real ultramarine. Around the kneeling Magi you can find two small children with wounds at their throats. They are the Holy Innocents, the infants killed on Herod's order, and they were put here for the children the hospital buried. Ghirlandaio filled the rest with the warm, particular faces he was known for and finished the panel in 1488.