LEONARDO DA VINCI’S ‘THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI’ BACK AT THE UFFIZI GALLERY

After six years of restoration and inspection, Leonardo da Vinci’s The Adoration of the Magi is back at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

Leonardo was commissioned to paint the “The Adoration of the Magi” in 1481 by the Austin Friars but stopped painting after a preliminary study upon leaving for Milan in 1491. Another altarpiece depicting the Adoration of the Magi was commissioned from Filippino Lippi and completed in 1496, while Leonardo’s work found a home in the palazzo of the Benci family in Florence, later joining the Medici family’s collections.

At 246 x 243 cm, the work is the Uffizi’s largest panel painting by the artist.

(Perspectival study for The Adoration of the Magi, c. 1481.)

MICHELANGELO

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)
“The Holy Family”, 1504.

The Doni Tondo or Doni Madonna, sometimes called The Holy Family, is the only finished panel painting by the mature Michelangelo to survive. Now in the Uffizi in Florence, Italy, and still in its original frame, the painting was probably commissioned by Agnolo Doni to commemorate his marriage to Maddalena Strozzi, the daughter of a powerful Tuscan family. The painting is in the form of a tondo, or round frame, which is frequently associated during the Renaissance with domestic ideas.

The work was most likely created during the period after the Doni’s marriage in 1503 or 1504, as well as after the excavation of the Laocoön about 1506, yet before the Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes were begun in 1508, dating the painting to approximately late 1506 or 1507. The Doni Tondo features the Christian Holy family (the child Jesus, Mary, and Saint Joseph) along with John the Baptist in the foreground and contains five ambiguous nude male figures in the background. The inclusion of these nude figures has been interpreted in a variety of ways.