A Adoração dos Magos

In February 1426 a Carmelite church in Pisa signed a contract with a young Florentine named Masaccio for a large altarpiece, and the payments were logged almost day by day through that year. This small panel ran along the base of it, beneath a now-separated Virgin and Child. Masaccio was about 25, and he was doing something new for his generation, setting solid, weighted figures in a landscape that recedes like real space, the horses seen from behind as if you stood in the road with them. The three kings kneel in plain daylight rather than gold. Within two years Masaccio was dead, and the altarpiece was later broken up, its panels scattered from London to here in Berlin.