In 1481, the monks of San Donato a Scopeto commissioned Leonardo to paint a large altarpiece.
He made extensive preparatory studies, sketched a complex pyramidal composition, applied brown wash and white highlights across the panel — and then left for Milan in 1482 and never came back.
The altarpiece was never finished.
What remains is one of the most studied unfinished works in art history.
The underdrawing is fully visible.
The heads of the Magi crowd around the Virgin in intense, almost anxious devotion.
Ruins and rearing horses fill the background.
You can see Leonardo thinking — working out problems in paint that he would solve in finished works later.
No finished painting reveals his method so clearly.
A recent technical analysis revealed that beneath the brown wash, Leonardo had painted a vivid green landscape.
He covered it to subdue it.
The finished painting would have been lighter and more colourful than scholars had assumed for centuries.
Fun fact: the monks who commissioned the painting eventually got tired of waiting and hired Filippino Lippi — Fra Filippo's son, who is also in this museum — to paint an Adoration instead.
Lippi's completed version is also in the Uffizi.
It is very accomplished.
It is not this.
