Gentile da Fabriano, 'The Adoration of the Magi', 1423

 

My eye has difficulty focusing on anything, certainly not on the religious subject. There is so much going on, so much detail and decoration, colour and gold. It feels more like a Christmas party than a Nativity. In the foreground the basic story is played out: Mary, Joseph, Jesus, architecture to represent the stable, a manger with straw, ox, ass, star, and the Magi with their gifts. The compositional curve of their flat, Gothic, disc-like haloes creates a focus and the 'sky' above the animals completes the circle - a space of calm. But that is less than half the picture space, and the rest is stuffed to bursting, from the background narrative of the journey to the extreme foreground where a kneeling servant removes spurs from one of the Magi, to the unexplained monkeys in the centre. Even the elaborate frame with its Trinity of arches is decorated with panels of greenery and flowers. There's an element of showboating here: Gentile is boasting of his skill with the foreshortened rear view horse on the right and all those different facial expressions. 

The artist seems to want the viewer to look at everything. All those flashes of seemingly randomly placed red, draw the eye, from the left foreground of the woman's underskirt, across to the stockings in the centre and then back through the crowd, and the same is true of the gold and the bridles and hats. It's a show of luxury too: all that precious blue and gold, the sumptuous fabrics, the huge train of followers and hangers-on. These Magi are not ancient wise men but fifteenth century nobles, in contemporary dress against an Italianate landscape. Yet all this earthly power and luxury is focused on a baby. These men have dismounted, removed their weapons, and are kneeling in the dirt in all their finery because there is something more powerful and more important. Even the ox, leaning its head forward with a serious gaze seems to sense it. At the heart of the painting is Christ leaning forward to bless the bald head of the kneeling old man and Mary behind him looking down with a mother's love. Clearly visible against the blue of her robe, her fingers pluck anxiously at the fabric. The gesture is a reminder of the end of the story when the crowds will once more gather for the crucifixion. And in that tiny detail Gentile reminds us that, despite all the show, this is still a piece of devotion.