The Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi
Giovanni di Francesco (1425/1426-1498) · c. 1440-1460
A strip of painting only twenty one centimetres high and more than a metre long tells two stories in one continuous landscape. At one end the Virgin kneels before the newborn Child in front of the stable, with Joseph and the animals; along the rest of the panel the three Magi and their retinue, on horseback and on foot, wind their way towards the Child to offer their gifts. The tiny figures, horses and hills are painted with the quick, decorative touch that suits a panel meant to be seen from close to.
This is an element of a predella, the row of small scenes beneath a large altar painting, made in Florence around the middle of the fifteenth century. The museum attributes it to Giovanni di Francesco, a painter close to Domenico Veneziano and Andrea del Castagno. It came to France with the Campana collection, bought in eighteen sixty one, when it was catalogued as Zanobi Strozzi, and entered the Louvre in eighteen sixty three as Italian school of the late fifteenth century. From eighteen seventy six to nineteen seventy seven it hung in the Musée Fabre at Montpellier, on loan.
Did You Know? The little strip spent a century in Montpellier on loan before returning to the Louvre in nineteen seventy seven.
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