東方三博士の礼拝

There is a reason this painting exists at all. In 1481 the monks of San Donato near Florence hired a young Leonardo da Vinci to paint their Adoration of the Magi. Leonardo started, then left it unfinished and went off to Milan. Fifteen years later, in 1496, the monks gave up waiting and commissioned Filippino Lippi to paint them a finished one instead. Lippi packed his version with real faces. Several of the kneeling figures around the Virgin are thought to be members of the Medici family, painted in as the Magi and their attendants, including the branch of the family that had recently been pushed out of Florence. He built the crowd into a broad pyramid, a shape Leonardo and Botticelli were both using then. Leonardo's abandoned panel and Lippi's finished one both ended up in the Uffizi, a few rooms apart, the unfinished idea and the picture that was actually delivered.