Adoration of the Magi (Filippino Lippi) Adoration of the Magi (Filippino Lippi) The Adoration of the Magi is a painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Filippino Lippi. It is signed and dated at 1496. It is housed in the Uffizi of Florence. The panel was painted for the Convent of the San Donato agli Scopeti, in substitution of the one commissioned in 1481 to Leonardo da Vinci, who left it unfinished. In 1529 it was acquired by Cardinal Carlo de' Medici and in 1666 it became part of the Uffizi collection. Filippino Lippi followed Leonardo's setting, in particular in the central part of the work. Much
Adoration of the Magi and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another path". Christian iconography has considerably expanded the bare account of the Biblical Magi given in the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew (–) and used it to press the point that Jesus was recognized, from his earliest infancy, as king of the earth. The scene was often used to represent the Nativity, one of the most indispensable episodes in cycles of the "Life of the Virgin" as well as the "Life of Christ". In the church calendar,