UNKNOWN MASTER, Italian
(active in 1340s in Milan)

Altarpiece of the Magi

1347
Marble, 70 x 220 cm
Sant'Eustorgio, Milan

Even though the church's relics of the Three Kings had been stolen several centuries earlier by Germans, who then built an elaborate shrine for them in Cologne, the Milanese continued to pay homage to the Magi. In 1347 the Scuola dei Magi, a prestigious lay group dedicated to the Three Kings, commissioned a marble altarpiece for their chapel in the church of Sant'Eustorgio. The altarpiece suggests the popular character of the Magi's cult in Milan.Carved in a direct, even slightly naive manner, the narrative begins in the right panel with the Magi making their way through densely carved hills in the background to an audience before King Herod. The central relief shows the Magi fervently adoring the Christ Child and presenting their gifts. At the left an angel commands the sleeping kings not to return to Herod but to seek another way home, again back into the compacted hillside at the upper left of the relief.