A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

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1124. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI.

Filippino Lippi (Florentine: 1457-1504). See 293.

See also (p. xx)

By some ascribed to Botticelli.[215] "There is an unmistakable drawing for it in the Uffizi Collection (No. 210), which is there ascribed to Botticelli, and which I, for one, am not at all inclined to take away from him. My own opinion is that there was no painter of the time who could have given so poetically conceived a background as we have in No. 1124; the drawing of some of the figures also speaks of itself" (Mr. Maurice Hewlett in the Academy, January 9, 1892).

For two other more highly-finished pictures of the same subject also ascribed to this master see 592 and 1033. This picture, with others from the Hamilton Collection, was in the "Old Masters" Exhibition of 1873. "The 'Adoration of the Magi,'" wrote Ruskin to Mr. Fairfax Murray, "had prettiness in it, but was poor stuff."