The Adoration of the Magi

Around 1600 the dominant influence in Toledo was that of El Greco. The link with the master was strongest in the distinguished painter Luis Trist�n, who stressed the Tenebrist aspects of some of El Greco’s work. Trist�n’s development was interrupted by his premature death, but not before he had completed work of such merit as the altarpiece in Yepes (1616) and that of Santa Clara de Toledo which was finished in 1623.

The Adoration of the Magi probably formed part of an altarpiece in the Jeronymite Convent of the Queen in Toledo, together with an Adoration of the Shepherds (now in Cambridge), Pentecost (now in Bucharest) and Resurrection (lost). It has the same composition as the Yepes altarpiece, however, the faces of the figures are different.