三博士来朝

This is early Perugino, made for a church in his home region of Umbria not long after he had trained in Florence, in the busy workshop circle around Verrocchio where a young Leonardo was also learning. You can see that Florentine schooling here, in the measured space and the calm, evenly lit crowd gathering around the newborn Christ. The three kings arrive from the East dressed in the fine clothes of Perugino's own day. And on the far left stands a young man in a red cap who breaks off to look straight out at you. Many believe that is the painter himself, slipping his own face into one of his first big commissions, the way Italian artists of the 1470s often signed a work without a signature.