Adoration of the Magi by Leonardo da Vinci Postcard

Adoration of the Magi by Leonardo da Vinci, oil and tempera on wood panel 1481, is a painting of the Wise Men visiting the Christ Child and Virgin Mary at the manger where Christ was born in Bethlehem. In a pyramidal composition, the Magi kneel before the infant Jesus and Mary, behind them a semi-circle of a large number of figures and men on horses, all set in an intricate perspective drawing with ancient ruins and trees. As the painting is unfinished in its early stages of underpainting, it reveals the manner in which Leonardo built the expressive contrasts of light and dark in tempera and thin oil paint over a delicate, classical drawing. Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519) was the greatest master of the High Italian Renaissance and quintessential "Renaissance Man" whose work as painter, sculptor, architect, inventor, anatomist and much more is without comparison. Born near Florence, Italy, and apprenticed to the painter Verrocchio, Leonardo invented many new ideas and extended the principles of perspective drawing, aerial perspective, the human figure and anatomy and much else to heights never seen since, during the period of rediscovery of the arts and philosophy of classical antiquity. Widely regarded as possibly the greatest artist who ever lived, Leonardo left very few completed paintings, due to either his restless experiments with painting technique that sometimes failed, or his infamous habit of procrastination.