Epiphany: the Met Panel

The Epiphany appeared towards the end of Giotto di Bondone’s career, in around 1320-1325.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art currently gives the more cautious date possibly around 1320 for this painting, which it calls The Adoration of the Magi. Measuring 45.1 × 43.8 centimetres, it is the small wood panel in New York, accession 11.126.1. Its reclining Virgin and the elderly king lifting Christ distinguish it immediately from Giotto’s separate Adoration of the Magi in the Scrovegni Chapel. The date remains an estimate rather than a documented year of execution. ^[1]

Introduction

This relatively small painting is smaller than half a meter in height and width, a far cry from the monstrous frescoes which he produced elsewhere. Giotto combined tempera with ground elements of gold to put this delightful piece together which today resides at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The museum’s precise description of the medium is tempera on wood with a gold ground. The broad gold background should therefore be understood as gilding, rather than as evidence that powdered gold was mixed throughout the paint. The panel has a strong physical presence: the standing kings reach almost from the bottom edge to Mary’s resting place, and the red cloak of their kneeling companion spreads across much of the foreground. Its scale invites close inspection, while its broad masses remain legible at a distance. ^[1]

The encounter centres on an unusual action. The oldest Magus has put down his crown and lifted the Child from the manger. Joseph extends his hands from the left, two other kings wait at the right, and Mary turns her head towards the activity below her. Above, angels and shepherds carry the Nativity story into the same compact field. These different heights and directions make the composition busy without making its main event difficult to find.

Description

Giotto would sometimes merge multiple narratives into a single scene and within The Epiphany he does precisely that. We find Adoration of the Magi and the Annunciation together, combining the content for the foreground and background.

More precisely, the picture combines the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi. The announcement associated with the shepherds belongs to the Nativity narrative; it is distinct from Gabriel’s earlier Annunciation to Mary. The reclining mother, manger, animals and shepherds surround the visiting Magi within one landscape. ^[21]

Two Gospel narratives in one field

Matthew 2:1–12 supplies the eastern visitors, their guiding star and the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. It describes their entry into a house, where they find the Child with Mary. It neither calls them kings nor states that there were three visitors. Luke 2:1–20 supplies the birth at Bethlehem, swaddling clothes and manger, followed by the angelic announcement to shepherds and their visit. Luke does not describe the Magi or their gifts. The panel brings these strands together through a familiar Christian pictorial tradition; neither Gospel describes this entire gathering. ^[22]

That distinction helps explain the image’s compression. Mary’s resting body evokes childbirth, while the gift-bearing visitors enact recognition of Christ. The painter gives the two episodes a shared centre in the same infant. There is only one Child here: he is the small, haloed figure held above the manger by the kneeling elder. The empty space of the manger and the animals behind it belong to that action, rather than to a second representation of Jesus.

Once aware of the themes involved, the figures can easily be identified. Crowned figures stand in the foreground, celebrating the newborn baby, whilst the mother looks on. Above we find angels circling, whilst a musician plays.

The upper-left figures are shepherds, one with a pipe at his mouth, beneath an angel reaching down towards them. Their rough, dark clothing contrasts with the long, richly edged garments of the kings. Four angels occupy the gold above and around the shelter: their outstretched or raised arms and differently angled bodies give this upper zone a much more mobile rhythm than the almost upright figures below. The pipe belongs within the pastoral group; the scene does not establish a separately identifiable musician.

The lifted Child and Mary’s response

One element to this work which many feel is of note would be how Christ the child is lifted up, much to the concern of his mother. This brings a human side to events, something which other artists of this period may not have done, but was very much in the Naturalism method used by Giotto throughout the early 14th century.

Mary’s concern is a reading of her expression and gesture, also offered by the Met, rather than something the image can certify about her private thoughts. What is visible is more specific: she remains recumbent on a red mattress, turns her face downward and extends a hand towards the foreground. Her dark blue mantle forms a long diagonal across the shelter. Below, the king’s bent torso and lifted forearms answer that downward movement, joining mother, visitor and Child across the intervening space. ^[1]

The elderly king holds the Child; his removed crown lies below. Image source. Public domain. Proportionally reduced reproduction; no colour or content enhancement.

The king supports the infant between his hands, bringing the small face close to his own. His grey hair falls against a brilliant red garment with elaborate decoration around the shoulders. Because we see much of his back, the turn of his head and the movement of his arms become particularly clear. The action has the immediacy of someone reaching towards an actual small body. Yet the Child’s large gold halo preserves his sacred identity within that physical encounter.

Keith Christiansen drew attention to this lifting gesture in his 1982 study of Italian altarpieces. He found no literary source for the particular action and related its concrete presentation to the devotional practice of imagining the life of Christ vividly. That is a scholarly explanation of the picture’s human detail, rather than proof that the painter illustrated a specified devotional passage. The Gospels describe the visitors’ worship and offerings, without saying that a Magus picked the infant up. ^[23]

Crowns, clothing and the waiting figures

The artwork features some stunning detail across the many figures, such as the crowns in the lower half. The Kings’ outfits are also completed with precise drapery and some ornate decoration for the king who holds up the child.

The crowns distinguish successive responses to the encounter. Both standing kings still wear theirs. The elder’s crown lies on the grey ground beside the flock, separated from his uncovered head by the sweep of his cloak. Its conspicuous placement allows the viewer to understand his act of reverence without an inscription. The standing man nearest him holds a tall vessel; the younger figure at the far right clasps another container. Their hands stay close to their bodies, emphasising the elder’s forward movement.

Colour helps differentiate these figures, but the folds make them substantial. The pale yellow-green cloak hangs in broad vertical passages from the bearded king’s shoulder, while the younger king’s pink fabric gathers over his forearm and falls in long curves. Gold borders follow the edges of these garments. The ornament makes their wealth visible, and the restrained outlines allow each figure to retain a clear shape within a crowded picture.

Joseph balances them on the opposite side. His yellow mantle and blue sleeve frame his outstretched hands and a small red lidded vessel. Between him and the kneeling king, the flock occupies the low foreground. Behind the infant, the ox and ass look over the manger. Their heads bring the Nativity setting close to the principal exchange, while the layered bodies and legs below give the grey ground a different, more irregular texture from the smooth expanses of royal clothing.

A shelter with depth

The timber shelter establishes the painting’s interior with very little enclosure. Uprights, diagonal braces and the underside of the roof give it thickness; the roof’s pale repeated lines spread above Mary. We can see into the dark space beneath it and read her body as resting within a built structure. The right-hand post also stands behind the waiting kings, tying their foreground position to the bed above.

Christiansen described four areas within the landscape: the foreground figures and flock; the manger with the ox and ass; Mary’s higher resting place beneath the shelter; and the implied area behind the hill occupied by the shepherds. His account is useful because the ground does not retreat as a single uninterrupted slope. Ledges and overlaps provide separate places for the different actions, while the shelter binds them together. He also observed that its structure is seen from below and slightly to the right. ^[21]

The repeated horizontal bands of roof, mattress and manger steady the image. Against them, the kneeling Magus rises diagonally and the angels turn in open gold. The painting therefore accommodates both a stable arrangement and a sudden action. Its spatial construction can be appreciated without treating it as a demonstration of the mathematically unified perspective developed in later Italian painting.

Giotto’s original colors have been faithfully preserved with a wider palette used by Giotto than most other artists in Italy at that time. Each figure’s clothing would often have a separate tone which allowed them their own personality and significance to the overall composition, where as others would often merge people together into groups.

The surviving colour distinctions are clear, but they do not establish that every visible passage is pristine or that this palette exceeded those of contemporary Italian painters. Cracking and wear are visible across the surface. One particularly noticeable feature has a documented history of alteration: the tailed star above the roof is a later addition. Christiansen identified it as such in 1982. Gordon’s technical note records degraded gilded tin from the earlier star and connects the replacement with renewed rays in the companion Pentecost, before the pictures separated in 1839. The present star cannot serve as untouched evidence of Giotto observing Halley’s Comet. ^{[21] [24]}

The Met panel’s angels and present star, whose visible form includes later work. Image source. Public domain. Proportionally reduced reproduction; no colour or content enhancement.

Location

The painting was donated to the American museum via the John Stewart Kennedy Fund in 1911, making it one of the few Giotto artworks to reside today within the US. The original work remains in excellent condition and has benefited from being removed from potentially aging architecture, to a temperature controlled setting.

The documented museum credit is John Stewart Kennedy Fund, 1911. This identifies the acquisition fund and year; it should not be expanded into a claim that Kennedy donated the painting. Nor does the panel’s present museum setting demonstrate that it was rescued from deteriorating architecture. It is a portable wooden painting whose original installation remains uncertain. ^[1]

The modern collecting history is firmer: Gordon records the panel in William Fuller-Maitland’s collection at Stansted House, Essex, by 1893, before its entry into the Met in 1911. This establishes a recent stage in its travels, leaving the medieval destination open. ^[25]

A fragment of a seven-scene ensemble

The New York picture once belonged to a much longer painted sequence. Its six surviving companions are the Presentation in the Temple at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston; the Last Supper, Crucifixion and Descent into Limbo at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich; the Entombment at Villa I Tatti near Florence; and the Pentecost in the National Gallery, London. The London painting is itself a small panel, distinct from the fresco of the same subject at Padua. ^[21]

Pentecost by Giotto and Workshop: the London Panel

Gordon reports that matching wood grain in X-radiographs establishes a common board approximately 308 centimetres long. New York and London occupied its opposite ends. Shared green preparation beneath the gold leaf supplies another technical connection. ^[25]

This wider sequence changes how the picture is understood. The Nativity and Adoration form its opening, while Christ’s Passion and the coming of the Holy Spirit occupy later scenes. The panel is an independent-looking square today because the original continuous support was divided. Its compact narrative once contributed to an extended account of Christ’s life.

Christiansen reconstructed the ensemble as a predella, the low narrative section beneath a larger altarpiece. His argument drew on the horizontal grain, surviving gold strips at the sides of scenes and traces of framing at the outer edges. He also considered a possible connection with the Bardi Chapel at Santa Croce, where Giotto and his workshop painted scenes from Saint Francis’s life. A sequence about Christ could have complemented those Franciscan narratives. Christiansen explicitly presented the Bardi identification as a theory rather than a probability. ^[26]

Gordon instead favours an autonomous dossal, a long, low altarpiece forming a complete object in itself. The painted fictive-porphyry reverse suggests visibility from behind. Neither reconstruction securely identifies the original church. ^[25]

The difference matters even when looking at this single panel. A predella would invite a mental reconstruction of a larger sacred image above it; an autonomous dossal would make the seven narratives the principal painted display. The physical association is considerably firmer than either reconstruction of the lost setting. A modern arrangement of the seven surviving pictures can illustrate their relationship, but it cannot restore every feature of their medieval presentation.

Giotto and the workshop

The Met attributes the Adoration to Giotto, while Gordon catalogues its London companion as Giotto and Workshop, around 1310–18 with a question mark. These labels preserve different judgments within a debated chronology. ^{[1] [25]}

Christiansen assigned a particularly strong role to Giotto in the design and the painting of the Magi, while proposing assistance in other passages. His distinction rested on the broad modelling of the kings’ faces, the drapery’s explanation of bodily form and differences in execution elsewhere. Such judgments help explain why a small panel has occupied an important place in discussions of Giotto’s workshop. They remain connoisseurial assessments, rather than a surviving list of who painted each figure. ^[21]

Conclusion

This Giotto masterpiece is a popular sight for American followers of the artist. It retains much of the original work, including bright tones and the touches of ground-down golden paint. We can also witness the figurative qualities of this artist who would become a major figure in the early stages of the Italian Renaissance.

Here the gold is best understood through the documented gold ground and surviving gilded details; the prominent replacement star also reminds us that the visible object has a history extending beyond its creation. Its physical appeal lies in the relationship between small scale and substantial forms: the infant’s slight body, the elder’s heavy cloak and Mary’s long reclining figure all occupy convincingly different amounts of space.

The content is also highly typical of the artist, with a combination of multiple religious stories, brought together in an innovative manner. He would have already covered both the Annunciation and the Adoration of the Magi several times by this point in his career and so would have been focused on re-inventing these stories once more as he did not like repetition in his oeuvre.

The combination here is specifically Nativity and Adoration. Its departure from Giotto’s separate treatment of those episodes at Padua is visible, although a personal dislike of repetition cannot be established from it. Within this single field, differences of age, posture, dress and height guide attention towards the Child. The kneeling king’s removed crown and raised hands make the encounter readable with particular economy, while the mother, shepherds and angels keep the act of worship connected to the story of the birth.