Adoration of the Magi (Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi) the painting, they were perhaps added by Benozzo Gozzoli around the time he was working on the famous fresco cycle of the Magi Chapel in the Medici Palace in 1459–61. Gozzoli was a former member of Fra Angelico's workshop who by then ran his own studio. The chapel frescos also centre on elaborate processions of the Magi, and include several birds, and feathers, one of which is a goshawk, and another a peacock in a very similar pose to the one in the tondo. The painting has been generally identified with one recorded in an inventory of the contents of
Adoration of the Magi from various Mediterranean and ancient Near Eastern cultures going back many centuries. The earliest are from catacomb paintings and sarcophagus reliefs of the 4th century. Crowns are first seen in the 10th century, mostly in the West, where their dress had by that time lost any Oriental flavour in most cases. The standard Byzantine depiction of the Nativity included the journey or arrival of the mounted Magi in the background, but not them presenting their gifts, until the post-Byzantine period, when the western depiction was often adapted to an icon style. Later Byzantine images often show small pill-box like hats,