Bassano, Jacopo

The Adoration of the Magi

c. 1560-65; Oil on canvas, 92.3 x 117.5 cm; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Although Jacopo Bassano, after studies in Venice, went back home to take over the family workshop in the provincial town of Bassano, he managed to keep abreast of all the latest trends in the art world. The Adoration of the Magi, a work from his mature period, bears all the traits of his particular variant of Mannerism. The figures, nearly abstract elements in an ever-changing play of diagonal lines, the refined contiguity of bold simplification and realistic detail drawing, the use of clashing, cold and acid colours: all these lend the familiar scene a wilfully original tone, one that exactly expressed the Mannerist propensity for the unusual and the striking.