Sassetta: An Enchanting Narrative Painter

Sassetta (Stefano di Giovanni) (Italian, Siena or Cortona ca. 1400–1450 Siena) - The Journey of the Magi - ca. 1433–35 - Tempera and gold on wood - 8 1/2 x 11 3/4 in. (21.6 x 29.8 cm) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (click photo for larger image)

Italian painter Sassetta (Stefano di Giovanni) (1394 - c. 1450) was one of the most enchanting narrative painters of the fifteenth century. Although the work featured here is only a fragment, it is one of the artist’s most popular creations. Sassetta has imagined the Magis' journey as a contemporary pageant, including fashionably attired figures and courtly details, such as the hunting falcon on a man's arm and the monkey riding on the back of a donkey. The ostriches on the hill symbolize the miraculous birth of Christ.

“This scene, by the leading painter of fifteenth-century Siena, shows the three magi journeying to Bethlehem to worship Christ. It is a fragment from a small altarpiece showing the Adoration of the Magi. Originally, the star was shown above the tiled roof of the stable. The fur-lined hat worn by the magus in pink was inspired by the visit to Siena in 1432 of King Sigismund of Hungary. The picture may date about 1433–35.” (Metropolitan Museum of Art) This panel was originally the upper part of a small Adoration of the Magi now in the Palazzo Chigi-Saraceni in Siena. (The upper edge of the stable roof is just visible along the bottom right edge.) 

Sassetta’s work mingles an innate conservatism, especially in his architectural structures, with a delight in the svelte forms of International Gothic figure design, and in the clarity and unity of Renaissance pictorial space.