Adoration of the Magi (Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi) wall until his death. These "desci" were typically decorated with allegorical or mythological scenes, while the large tondo was mostly used for religious subjects. But the shape was not found in paintings for churches, and may have carried a deliberate suggestion of a commission for a palace. Apart from the tondo being discussed, another with a loosely similar composition showing the "Adoration of the Magi", by Domenico Veneziano (now Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) is probably a Medici commission of c. 1439–1442; it may also be another painting recorded in the 1492 inventory (though that Magi tondo is there attributed to Pesellino). Among
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,