Scripture · Luke 1:41-42
Matthew 2:11
Adoration of the Magi
On coming to the house, they saw the Child with His mother Mary, and they fell down and worshiped Him. Then they opened their treasures and presented Him with gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh.
Two wounded children kneel among the kings. Their exposed bodies interrupt the rich fabrics and turn this Adoration toward the children for whom its original setting existed.
About the artwork
Ghirlandaio painted the work for the church of Florence's Ospedale degli Innocenti, an institution caring for abandoned children. The museum identifies the small figures as martyrs of Herod's massacre, presented beside John the Baptist and John the Evangelist. They are brought into the foreground rather than left as a distant episode.
The altarpiece also includes its patron, Prior Francesco Tesori, and richly dressed figures probably associated with the Silk Guild. Those portraits bring the institution's adult world into the same space as the children. The painting joins the people who commissioned and supported the hospital with the vulnerability it was meant to answer.
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What does Matthew 2:11 mean?
The gifts in Matthew 2:11 precede the chapter's massacre of the children at Bethlehem. Ghirlandaio draws the welcome and the later violence together, so that honoring one child cannot entirely absorb our attention from the others. In a church serving children who needed care, that juxtaposition had a particular force. The gold and fine clothing remain splendid, but the small bodies in front of them change what the splendour is being asked to notice.
Sources
Museo degli Innocenti: Ghirlandaio and the institution. Exact-work entry identifies the patrons, saints and two child martyrs.
Matthew 2 — Berean Standard Bible. The paired text read in its surrounding chapter.
Also from Matthew:Marriage of the VirginThe Dream of Saint Joseph
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