Adoration of the Magi (Signorelli)

Adoration of the Magi is a painting in tempera on wood panel by Luca Signorelli (1450–1523) and his assistants, executed c. 1493–1494, and now in the Louvre in Paris. It was probably the first painting he produced in Città di Castello, and originally hung over the main altar of the monastery church of Sant'Agostino. The surface displayed within the frame is 331 cm by 245.5 cm. In late 2022 it was not on display.^[1]

It was the main element in an altarpiece that is now dispersed. Four small predella panels now in other collections have been connected by art historians with the piece. These are now in a private collection in Scotland, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and the John G. Johnson Collection in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.^[2]

Signorelli was born in the town of Cortona in Tuscany, about 20 kilometres from Città di Castello in Umbria.^[3] In his early 40s he had returned to live in Cortona, after working in Florence, Siena and Rome (1478–1484, painting a now lost section of the Sistine Chapel). With an established reputation, he remained based in Cortona for the rest of his life, but often travelled to the cities of the region to fulfill commissions. This altarpiece comes a few years before the large set of frescos in Orvieto Cathedral which have always been regarded as his masterpiece. Probably trained by Piero della Francesca in Florence, as his cousin Giorgio Vasari wrote, his Quattrocento style was about to become rather out of date over the following years.^[4] The earliest documented painting by the young Raphael was the Baronci Altarpiece (1500–1501) for the same church for which this altarpiece was painted; this was badly damaged in an earthquake in 1789, and only fragments survive.^[5]