(lively piano music)
Voiceover: One of the wealthiest people
in early Renaissance Florence
commissioned Gentile da Fabriano
to paint a magnificent altar piece
for his family's private chapel
in an important church, Santa Trinita.
Voiceover: The subject is the Adoration of the Magi.
The Magi are by legend the three kings
who follow a star that leads them to Christ
who has just been born,
to whom they present gifts
and acknowledge Christ as King of Kings
by removing their own crowns,
and placing them before Christ.
This was commissioned by a man
who was incredibly wealthy.
Essentially the king of Florence
but Florence had no kings.
Florence was a republic.
Voiceover: The city of Florence was an independent,
a political entity
that was controlled by the wealthy merchants of the city
and their guilds.
Voiceover: The people of Florence were independent
and proud members of a republic
but then you had this enormous accumulation of wealth
especially in the early 15th century.
Voiceover: This painting is a perfect way
of showing off that wealth.
The artist came from Northern Italy,
settled in Florence in large part
because there was money to be made there.
There were patrons to be had there.
Voiceover: He was very handsomely paid for this altar piece.
We read one estimate that he was paid
six times the annual wage of a skilled laborer
for this one altar piece.
Voiceover: His particular style is one of opulence.
It's a bejeweled surface.
There's gold.
It's a perfect way
for one of the leading families in Florence
to show its importance.
Voiceover: The Strozzi family made their money
primarily through banking.
Through handling gold.
Although Palla Strozzi,
the patron for this particular painting
ignored the banking business
and was much more interested in the arts
and humanist learning.
Voiceover: As we stand here in the Uffizi Museum in Florence
it's interesting to watch people look at this painting.
Those people are picking out
the many anecdotes that you can recognize
very much the way people would have
when the painting was first made.
This is a real crowd-pleaser.
Voiceover: There's fun things to see.
Voiceover: We can make out
the story of the Magi very clearly.
It's really quite an inventive structure
because you have a continuous landscape,
but what we're seeing within it
are whole series of moments in time.
Voiceover: It's a continuous narrative.
Voiceover: In the upper left corner
we can see the three kings very distant
just under the star of Bethlehem over the sea.
We understand this from the story to be in the East.
Voiceover: Which explains their attire.
Then in the central arch
we see the three kings entering Jerusalem
where King Herod asked the three Magi
to report back where they find this king
that King Herod has heard will threaten his reign.
Voiceover: He would like to kill the child Voiceover: Yes.
Voiceover: but of course doesn't let on.
Then in the right most upper corner
we see the three Magi entering the city of Bethlehem.
Then presumably, the scene that is laid out before us
is taking place there.
Voiceover: We get the sense of a crowd
watching the three Magi approach Christ and Mary.
Voiceover: The Christ child is playful.
Look at those feet
and we see the three Magi
in the process of bowing down before Christ.
You can see that there are two attendants
just behind Mary that are examining the first gift,
and Joseph is standing just to Mary's left.
Voiceover: The spurs are being removed
from the youngest Magi's ankles.
He just gotten off his horse
and he's about to approach Jesus.
Voiceover: In fact, we see lots of pages.
There is a sense of the courtliness of the scene.
The spurs that you are talking about
are really marvelous.
They're actually built up to be three-dimensional
and this is done with plaster that is then gilded,
but what it makes it look like
is that it's a solid piece of gold
that this is jewelry attached to the image itself.
Voiceover: You can see why that kind of
treatment of the gold might appeal
to as wealthy a patron as Palla Strozzi.
Voiceover: The style of this painting
is generally referred to as International Gothic.
This is the last moment of the Gothic
before the renaissance rule developed.
Voiceover: That's because we don't see
some of the things that we associate
with the early renaissance year.
Unlike with Masaccio whose painting
just a few years after this
we don't see the near perspective.
In fact, we see a building up by the figures
pressed into the foreground.
Voiceover: The artist is avoiding
the overlapping and obscuring of figures.
Voiceover: At the same time we see foreshortening
which helps to create an illusion of space
with the horse on the right for example
or the horse behind who's facing us.
Voiceover: Of course, diminishing scale.
The figures get smaller as we're meant to read them
going further back in space.
The artist may have been influenced
by somebody like Ambrogio Lorenzetti
who had created an extensive landscape
in the city of Siena.
Voiceover: The figures are still somewhat elongated
especially if you look at the Virgin Mary.
Although the artist is using modeling
to describe her knees and her thighs.
If she were to stand up
I think we would see her as being tall and thin.
Voiceover: I think the emphasis here is on
her elegance, her beauty
as opposed to her anatomical accuracy.
Voiceover: Which would be a very Gothic thing
and not a very renaissance thing.
Voiceover: The main panel is set between smaller scenes.
Above we have Christ blessing
and then we have an enunciation on either side.
Below we have three predella scenes.
Voiceover: In the predella panels
we see three scenes from Christ's childhood.
On the left the Nativity,
in the center the Flight into Egypt,
and on the right the Presentation in the Temple.
Voiceover: Let's take a close look at the Nativity.
Voiceover: This has been called
one of the first night scenes in art history.
Lighting that comes from the moon and the stars,
and the angels and the Christ child himself.
Voiceover: There's so many lovely details.
Look for instance at the crown of peacocks
worn by the figure on the right
or the way in which the flowers
in the frame push outward.
Voiceover: To me this painting is very much
an accumulation of details.
There's a lot to look at
but it still resides in the late Medieval Gothic tradition.
Voiceover: And is a reminder
of the tremendous wealth
that would make the Florentine Renaissance possible.
(lively piano music)