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Your galleryThe Adoration of the Magi
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Follow the line from the raised cup to the kneeling kings and the Child held out to them, then find the broken wheel at the lower right.
Mary sits high on a platform and holds the Christ Child out to the Magi: two bearded kings kneel while the third, a Black man in a turban, stands behind them raising a cup. Tiepolo set the group off center and let the white paper, framed by brown wash, read as bright sunlight. A broken wheel in the foreground, the emblem of Saint Catherine, turns up again in Tiepolo’s etching of the same subject, and the drawing may be connected with that print.
pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash, over black chalk · Sheet: 38.7 x 28.5 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art · Rococo
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Details and source
- Museum title
- The Adoration of the Magi
- Artist
- Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Italian, 1696–1770)
- Date
- c. 1740
- Medium
- 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.)
- Credit line
- Dudley P. Allen Fund
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.