The Adoration of the Magi (c. 1740): Art, History and Details

The Adoration of the Magi (c. 1740) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Italian, 1696–1770).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

According to the Gospel of Matthew, three Magi, guided by a star, found the newborn Jesus and laid gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh before him. Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) Tiepolo’s drawing of the traditional subject places the Madonna on a platform as she holds the Christ child out toward three approaching magi. Two bearded white magi kneel in supplication as the turbaned black magi stands behind them. Tiepolo plays with the conventions of the Adoration subject by employing an asymmetrical composition. Working over his black chalk underdrawing, traces of which are visible in the figures’ robes, the artist delineated the scene with brown ink, quill pen, and brush before modeling with brown wash. Tiepolo’s mastery over value is evident in his contrasts of dark shadow with light midtones and the luminous white of his paper, producing his celebrated effects of glistening sunlight and clear atmosphere. The broken wheel in the foreground, an attribute of Saint Catherine, also appears in Tiepolo's etching of the same subject (1965.18) to which this drawing may be related.

Object facts

• Title: The Adoration of the Magi
• Date: c. 1740
• Creator attribution: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Italian, 1696–1770)
• Culture: Italy, Venice
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash, over black chalk
• Dimensions: Sheet: 38.7 x 28.5 cm (15 1/4 x 11 1/4 in.)
• Collection: DR - Italian
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1944.474

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Francis, Henry S. "’The Adoration of the Magi,’ a Drawing by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 33, no. 1 (1946): 8-9.
• Millier, Arthur. The Drawings of Tiepolo. Los Angeles: Borden Publishing Co., 1956.
• Rizzi, Aldo. Disegni del Tiepolo. Udine: Loggia del Lionello, 1965.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.