page_title: Adoration of the Magi (Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi)
section_title: Stages of painting
hierarchical_section_title: Adoration of the Magi (Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi) / Stages of painting
context_page_description: The Adoration of the Magi is a tondo, or circular painting, of the Adoration of the Magi assumed to be that recorded in 1492 in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence as by Fra Angelico. It dates from the mid-15th century and is now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Most art historians think that Filippo Lippi painted more of the original work, and that it was added to some years after by other artists, as well as including work by assistants in the workshops of both the original masters. It has been known as the Washington Tondo and Cook Tondo after a former owner, and this latter name in particular continues to be used over 50 years after the painting left the Cook collection.
  The tondo is painted in tempera on a wood panel, and the painted surface has a diameter of 137.3 cm. The National Gallery of Art dates it to "c. 1440/1460".
  Art historians are agreed that the painting was produced over a considerable period, with significant changes in the composition, and contributions from a number of hands. While some are critical of the discordances this history has produced, for John Walker, the second director of the National Gallery of Art, the result was
context_section_description: The painting as it now appears is believed to have developed in several stages.  In the usual reconstruction, first advanced by Bernard Berenson, the painting was begun by Fra Angelico and his workshop, probably in the 1440s. The hand of Fra Angelico himself is detected in the face of the Virgin Mary, but other parts of the painting seem to be by assistants.  The small figures on the steep path at the right of the painting fit his workshop stylistically, and it has been pointed out that the direction they face, and in which some point, does not relate well to the composition as it is today.  The same can also be said of many of the smaller figures on the left side of the work. Angelico's workshop was very busy, and his career was dogged by a number of disputes over uncompleted commissions.  Progress on the tondo seems to have stalled. At some point, perhaps upon Angelico's death in 1455, the unfinished work appears to have passed to the workshop of Filippo Lippi, the other main Florentine painter of the period.  Both Angelico and Lippi worked on other commissions for the Medici family, then at the peak of their wealth and power.
  The whole stable has been described as "an awkward later addition", perhaps occupying a space once intended for the main figures, and the peacock and other birds on the roof of the stable are painted over finished areas, rather than areas "reserved" as would be the case if they had been planned from the start. They appear to come from an even later phase of painting, and have been connected with emblems adopted by Cosimo de' Medici's sons Piero (1416–1469) and Giovanni (1421–1463).  The former used a falcon holding a ring, with the motto "SEMPER" ("always" or "for ever" in Latin) and the latter a peacock with the motto "REGARDE-MOI" ("Watch me" in French). Together with the dog on the grass at the bottom of the painting, they were perhaps added by Benozzo Gozzoli around the time he was working on the famous fresco cycle of the Magi Chapel in the Medici Palace in 1459–61.  Gozzoli was a former member of Fra Angelico's workshop who by then ran his own studio.  The chapel frescos also centre on elaborate processions of the Magi, and include several birds, and feathers, one of which is a goshawk, and another a peacock in a very similar pose to the one in the tondo.
caption: Detail probably including work from three phases
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