Florence Christmas art: Baby Jesus Adoration

Florence Christmas art, part two: after our previous posts about Christmas in Florence and the arworks having the Nativity as subject, here it is a list of the different declinations of the Baby Jesus adoration iconographic topos

Florence Christmas art: the different Baby Jesus Adoration versions

The iconographic topos of the Baby Jesus Adoration has three main declinations:

Adoration of the Child;
Adoration of the Shepherds;
Adoration of the Magi.

The Uffizi Gallery treasures many paintings of the Adoration from great artists of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and Mannerism.

Let’s take a look together at the main ones…

Adoration of the Child

We could say that the Adoration of the Child topos is a variation of the Holy Family or the Madonna and Child ones, a variation in which the focus is on the divinity of the baby.

In the Uffizi Gallery you can find:

Adorazione del Bambino di Annalena, Filippo Lippi, 1453;
Adorazione del Bambino di Camaldoli, Filippo Lippi, 1463;
Adorazione del Bambino, Filippino Lippi (Filippo’s son), around 1483;
Adorazione del Bambino, Correggio (from the Emilia Romagna area), around 1526;
Adorazione del Bambino, Gherardo delle Notti (Gerard van Honthorst, Dutch Golden Age painter), around 1620.

Adoration of the Shepherds

A touch of bucolic humanity to the scene in the Adoration of the Shepherds topos.

The paintings with this topos are usually not from the early Renaissance.

Adorazione dei Pastori, Lorenzo di Credi, around 1510;
Adorazione dei Pastori, Ludovico Mazzolino, (Emilia Romagna school), 1520 – 1524;
Adorazione dei Pastori, Amico Aspertini, around 1530;
Adorazione dei Pastori, Francesco Salviati, around 1545;
Adorazione dei Pastori, Giorgio Vasari, around 1550. More an art historian and an architect, Vasari deals here with this less popular representation of the Adorazione concept.

Adoration of the Magi

The Adoration of the Magi is related to the concept, and catholic feast, of the Epiphany: the revelation of God incarnate as Jesus Christ along the visit of the Magi, the Three Kings.

The related Uffizi painting are:

Adorazione dei Magi, Lorenzo Monaco, 1420-1422;
Adorazione dei Magi, Gentile da Fabriano, 1423. An outstanding piece of medieval art with a touch of modernity: the “realistic” representation of the sky in the predella;
Adorazione dei Magi, Sandro Botticelli, around 1475;
Adorazione dei Magi, Leonardo da Vinci, 1481-1482. One of the not so few unfinished business by the symbol of ingenuity;
Adorazione dei Magi Tornabuoni, Domenico Ghirlandaio, 1487;
Adorazione dei Magi, Filippino Lippi, 1496;
Adorazione dei Magi, Albrecht Dürer, 1504. The Uffizi Gallery is not only an Italian business. Dürer is one of the most important artists of the German Renaissance.

Florence Christmas art: not only Uffizi, the Magi Chapel

The Magi Chapel in Palazzo Medici Riccardi gives the religious theme a politics (and thus, for us, historic) related value: in the Benozzo Gozzoli frescoes many members of the Medici family are represented within the scenes.