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painting The Adoration of the Magi

Object number

LDSAL346

Artist/Designer/Maker

Smirke, Richard - Artist

Production date

1800-1802
mid 14th century

Material

paper
Egg Tempera
gold leaf

Dimensions

height: 82.5cm
width: 116.5cm

Location

Burlington House -

References

Reference (free text)

Alan Borg, The History of the Worshipful Company of Painters, Otherwise Painter-Stainers (Huddersfield: Jeremy Mills Publishing, 2005).Illustration, pl. 3, opp. p. 11.

Reference (free text)

David Gaimster, Sarah McCarthy, and Bernard Nurse, eds., Making History, Antiquaries in Britain, 1707-2007 (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2007), p. 147, no. 106. Illustration, p. 147.
    Reproduction of The Adoration of the Magi, a fifteenth-century wall painting from St. Stephens Chapel, by Richard Smirke (1778-1815) in 1800-02, using tempera and gold leaf on paper.
    Following a reconstruction of St Stephen’s Chapel in the Palace of Westminster in 1800, a chance discovery of wall paintings prompted the Society to commission Richard Smirke to reproduce and reconstruct the wall painting images. From tracings and pencil drawings he produced highly finished coloured paintings to give an impression of what must have been one of the most richly decorated medieval buildings in Britain. Depicting the Adoration of the Magi, Smirke has vividly reconstructed scenes of gift-bearing to the Virgin and Child in the upper panels and St George presenting Edward III and five of his sons in full armour in the lower panels. Thought to be originally executed in the mid-fourteenth century and measuring 1.5 by 2 metres, Smirke’s recordings are invaluable as the paintings were later obliterated in building works and by fire damage.