Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see. Search for: Search. Inserted in the painting are portraits of three generations of the Medici. Popular this Week. Follow Us Twitter Facebook. Share this:. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. Members of the important families in Florence were often portrayed as magi or as their companions on the paintings with the motif of the Adoration of the Magi.
There are several representations of this motif which depicted portraits of Medici. They were made by the most known Italian renaissance artists such as Gozzoli, Botticelli, Veneziano, Lippi, Ghirlandaio… At the height of his fame, the Florentine painter and draughtsman Sandro Botticelli was one of the most esteemed artists in Italy. Sandro Botticelli, was the son of Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, Alessandro — whose nickname derives from that of his brother Giovanni, called "Botticello" little barrel.
Botticelli entered Filippo Lippi's workshop toward the end of the s. He also employed Filippino Lippi , his late teacher's son, as his apprentice, and broke convention by completing Filippino's version of The Adoration of the Kings — it was far more usual for an apprentice to finish a painting by his master rather than the other way round. Botticelli in turn spent almost all his life working for the Medici family and their circle of friends, for whom he painted some of his most ambitious secular paintings such as Primavera in the Uffizi, Florence.
In the Uffizi there is another painting by Sandro Botticelli which is both a portrait of the Medici family and a self-portrait of the artist. It is the celebrated Adoration of tlre Magi , painted around the year for the chapel patronized by the Lama or Lami family in Santa Maria Novella.
It is the picture that, according to Vasari, made the young Sandro famous in Florence and Italy and opened the way to Rome. The Lami Chapel was dedicated to the Epiphany because the client's name, Gaspare, was the same as the one traditionally attributed to one of the three Magi. This explains the choice of the iconographic subject. But the journey of the Magi to the stabIe in Bethlehem had already become part of Medici mythography. Less than twenty years earlier Benozzo Gozzoli had painted a fresco in the private chapel of the family palace, the celebrated ceremonial and formal cavalcade known as the Journey of the Magi in which we can recognize, alongside eminent figures of the Italian aristocracy Pandolfo Malatesta, Galeazzo Maria Sforza and the most prominent notables of the city oligarchy, several members of the Medici house: Cosimo the head of the family, his son and heir Piero, probably his illegitimate son Giovanni and the children Lorenzo and Giuliano.
The only thing we can be sure of is that the protagonists of the sacred representation, i. The three members of the family portrayed in the guise of the Magi were all dead at the time Botticelli painted the Adoration of the Magi now in the Uffizi. So their presence has the significance of a sort of sanctification post mortem.
In another age and a different city, presenting three contemporaries who had passed away not many years previously as saints the Magi were and still are considered such to all intents and purposes would have created some embarrassment and prompted more than legitimate prohibitions.
All the more so given that this sanctification in effigy was done on the altar of a public chapel, in one of the most famous. A church it should not be forgotten governed by the Dominicans, the order that was the learned custodian and unbending guarantor of theological and liturgical orthodoxy and of canonical correctness. But what would have appeared reckless at the very least elsewhere in Italy and Europe was evidently quite feasible in the Medicean Florence of the late fifteenth century.
A family of wealthy private citizens which had established its dominance while maintaining a formal respect for republican institutions, it exercised de facto such power as to render possible blatantly and sickeningly adulatory public tributes like the one paid by Gaspare Lami in the chapel of the Epiphany in Santa Maria Novella.
In the age of Lorenzo the Magnificent the hegemony of the Medici family over the State was achieved with the support of the bourgeois oligarchy and relied on such celebratory propaganda. To do so, it made extensive, decisive and canny use of the figurative arts.
In certain cases the two instruments of consensus political support of the elite, public celebration through painting were used side by side and can be found in the same work. The perfect example of this aspect of late fifteenth-century Medicean Florence was to be realized, about ten years after the execution of the altarpiece of the Epiphany, in Domenico Ghirlandaio's frescoes in the Sassetti Chapel in Santa Trinita.
Francesco Sassetti was a major figure in the Florentine financial oligarchy and decided to decorate his family chapel with a cycle of frescoes devoted to the life and miracles of his patron saint, Francis of Assisi.
Yet it is clear straightaway that in the cycle in the Sassetti Chapel the presence of the Poor Man of Assisi is little more than a pretext. He plays the part of a modest second lead. The main character is Lorenzo the Magnificent, represented alongside Sassetti himself, his children and their famous tutors Politian, Luigi PuIci, Matteo Franco in the scene of the Confirmation of the Rule.
A Ieading role is played by Florentia felix at the height of Medici power, and in fact the pope and the college of cardinals who receive St. Another leading role is taken by the wealthy bourgeois elite, the Pucci, Acciaioli, Strozzi and Antinori who-politically guided and represented by Lorenzo the Magnificent-are present at the miracle of the boy of Casa Spini.
I believe these to have been the paintings that really scandalized Girolamo SavonaroIa: works, I mean, such as the altarpiece of the Epiphany commissioned from Botticelli by Gaspare Lami or Domenico Ghirlandaio's frescoes in the Sassetti Chapel. His presence in this painting illustrates a radical shift in the perception of artists during this time period: Botticelli did not view himself as an ordinary craftsman hired for a simple job, he saw himself as a friend to the powerful families of Florence.
The Adoration of the Magi is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli , dating from or , early in his career. The work is on display at the Uffizi in Florence. Botticelli was commissioned to paint at least seven versions of The Adoration of the Magi.
In the scene numerous characters are present, among which are several members of the Medici family: Cosimo de' Medici the Magus kneeling in front of the Virgin, described by Vasari as "the finest of all that are now extant for its life and vigour" , his sons Piero the second Magus kneeling in the centre with the red mantle and Giovanni the third Magus , and his grandsons Giuliano and Lorenzo.
The three Medici portrayed as Magi were all dead at the time the picture was painted, and Florence was effectively ruled by Lorenzo. Whether Botticelli's intimate relations with the Medici brothers allowed the wealthy Gaspare to introduce the portraits of their kinsmen in his altar-piece, or Gaspare was glad for this opportunity to pay a graceful compliment to these powerful personages is hard to tell.
It is, however, apparent from the great pains in which Botticelli bestowed on these figures, that this formed an important part of the task. Also Gaspare himself is said to be included in the painting, as the old man on the right with white hair and a light blue robe looking and pointing at the observer.
Furthermore, also Botticelli is alleged to have made a self-portrait as the blonde man with yellow mantle on the far right. In his Lives, Vasari describes the Adoration in the following way: The attention to details, such as the garments rendering, show the acquisition by the Florentine artist of the influences from the Flemish school at this point of his career.
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