Carlo Dolci, The Adoration of the Kings

The Three Kings kneel before the Virgin Mary and infant Christ, presenting their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. This is the Adoration of the Kings as related in the Bible (Matthew 2: 11). The Kings have travelled from the East following the star which has led them to Bethlehem and the stable in which Christ was born.

This is the finest and most complex of Carlo Dolci’s versions of the subject. The Virgin sits serenely in the centre, the golden-haired child on her knee blessing the King who kneels before him, his turban on the ground beside him. The Kings are dressed in sumptuous robes: the one on the left, seen from behind, wears a turban and a jacket embroidered with flowers and trimmed with blue tassels; the one on the right has a gleaming gold crown studded with jewels. The metal vessels containing the gifts are meticulously painted, as are the jewels which adorn the Kings‘ robes.

The painting is in superb condition: the richness of paint and refinement of detail are extraordinary. The Kings’ gifts appear gold but are executed in paint, while the haloes of the holy family are made of real (shell) gold, as is the light radiating from the Christ Child. This has the effect of making them glow in the darkness of the stable. The architectural details of the stable, the wooden rafters and stones of the door frame are painted with exemplary realism.

Through an opening on the right we can see the Kings‘ exotic retinue, including camels and more turbanned figures, and a mountainous landscape, evoking their long journey from the East. Peering round the door at far right is Dolci himself, wearing a red hat: his self portrait is recognisable from other paintings. The painting remains on its original canvas and stretcher – an inscription on the reverse (in the artist’s own hand) tells us that the painting was commissioned in 1649, when Dolci was 33 years old. The subject had a particular resonance for the artist, as his extensive inscriptions on the stretcher would indicate.

The picture was once owned by Tommaso Generotti, a member of a Florentine family originally from Verona, who settled in the Santa Maria Novella district. Along with his father and brother Lionardo, Tommaso was a member of the Compagnia di San Benedetto Bianco, the lay confraternity which Dolci himself joined while an apprentice. A number of confratelli commissioned pictures from the young painter: Lionardo owned his Moses (Pitti Palace, Florence) and two other lost paintings. The Adoration of the Kings passed to the merchant-banking Gerini family, probably in around 1673, when the Generotti line died out: the buyer, Girolamo d’Andrea Gerini, paid 280 scudi for it – a considerable sum, though not surprising given its outstanding quality.

The composition was popular with both Italian and English aristocrats, and Dolci painted a number of versions. An early version of about 1635 (now at Blenheim Palace, Woodstock) was painted for Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici. Another (Burghley House Collection, Stamford) was painted by Dolci in around 1681 for the Earl of Exeter, who had perhaps seen our painting in the Gerini collection during one of his trips to Italy.