Adoration des Mages

1480/1481 · Graphic arts

May one see it?

Unknown: the museum keeps its counsel

Paris, France

The owner is known. Whether it is on view today, the museum does not say, and we were not trained to guess.

1469–1482 · Workplace
Florence
January 1478
An independent commission: an altarpiece for the Signoria
Leonardo received a commission for an altarpiece for the Chapel of Saint Bernard in the Palazzo della Signoria, Florence's town hall — a sign of his independence from Verrocchio's workshop. It was never completed.
March 1481
Begins “The Adoration of the Magi”
The monks of San Donato a Scopeto commissioned the altarpiece “The Adoration of the Magi”, a complex composition of about 250 × 250 cm with some fifty figures. It was left unfinished when the artist went to Milan in 1482.
1482
Lorenzo de' Medici's envoy to Ludovico il Moro
Lorenzo de' Medici sent Leonardo as an ambassador to Ludovico il Moro, ruler of Milan. He brought a silver string instrument, a lute or lyre, in the form of a horse's head, and wrote the duke a letter setting out what he could achieve in engineering and weapon design, adding that he could paint.
1482–1500 · Workplace
Milan
1483–1494
Paints “The Virgin of the Rocks”
Leonardo began work on “The Virgin of the Rocks” in 1483 and finished it in 1490–1494.