東方三博士の礼拝

This Adoration was painted in the 1490s in Bruges, a Flemish city grown rich on trade, by Gerard David, who had come south from the Dutch town of Oudewater and joined the painters' guild there in 1484. It is a northern picture through and through, and that is what makes it worth noticing inside a gallery of Florentines. Where an Italian might have opened up warm space and clear light, David fills the scene with dense, jewel-bright colour and the patient surface detail Flemish painting was prized for across Europe, down to the textures of the kings' brocades and the gifts they carry. The oldest king kneels bareheaded before the Child, his crown set on the ground. David returned to this subject more than once, and Florentine collectors valued Flemish panels like this highly, which is how a Bruges Adoration came to hang among the Tuscan masters of the Uffizi.