The Adoration of the Kings: Upper Tier Panel

The 12 main panels of the altarpiece, one of the largest to be commissioned in 14th-century Florence, are in the National Gallery Collection. The predella shows scenes from the life of Saint Peter and is dispersed in different collections.

The painting was commissioned for the church of San Pier Maggiore in Florence, probably by the Albizzi family. The accounts of 1370 show that a certain Niccolò, probably Niccolò di Pietro Gerini, designed the altarpiece. It was painted by Jacopo di Cione and assistants and completed in 1371.

In the centre of the composition of the central panel are Christ and the Virgin, dressed in white and gold, and seated upon a canopied throne surrounded by angels. The panels to each side are densely crowded with saints; to the left a prominent Saint Peter carries a model of San Pier Maggiore. The middle tier of the altarpiece, which would have been supported by heavy buttresses, showed (from left to right) the Nativity, the Adoration of the Kings, the Resurrection, the Maries at the Sepulchre, the Ascension and Pentecost. In the three pinnacles above, the Trinity appeared in the centre with adoring angels on each side. A later, more fluent, Florentine version of the theme is 'The Coronation of the Virgin' by Lorenzo Monaco.