Adoration of the Magi: Sandro Botticelli

During the Renaissance, the Italian city was a self-governed, independent state. From around 1434, however, the Medici banking family unofficially ruled the city. The dynasty that they formed commissioned a vast array of paintings, sculptures and architecture, and their generosity and competitive nature ensured the city’s status as the artistic centre of Europe during the fifteenth century and beyond. Florentine Renaissance artist Benozzo Gozzoli was commissioned by the Medici family to make a fresco for the private chapel of the Palazzo Medici. As was common practice, it included a representation of his patrons in The Procession of the Magi c.1459-1461. But as an indication of the relatively high status of the artist, Gozzoli also included a self-portrait with the words OPUS BENOTTI.
The Medici family was so powerful that its members even appeared in paintings they had not directly commissioned. Guasparre di Zanobi Del Lama commissioned The Adoration of the Magi. C.1475. from Sandro Botticelli, which features several members of the Medici family. The answer of why did Guasparre pay Botticeli to depict so many members of the most powerful banking family in Florence may lie in Guasparre’s dubious past. The lowly patron had been convicted of embezzlement in 1447 but made his subsequent fortune as a broker and money changer. This wealth allowed him to commission Botticelli to paint this altarpiece in a chapel of Santa Maria Novella. Bearing in mind that the Medici were enrolled with the Guild of Money Charges( Arte di Cambio) it is little wonder Guasparre wanted to secure a favourable association with them. The Adoration was the only artistic product of Guasparre’s brief social elevation. In 1476 he was convicted of fraud again and banned from trading. In the composition, Del Lama may be seen among the crowd of people on the right-hand side of the picture, an elderly man with white hair and a light blue robe looking at the observer and pointing in the latter's direction with his right hand. The most famous members of the Medici family are portrayed together with del Lama, there is no doubt that the eldest king, kneeling before the Virgin and the Christ Child, is a representation of Cosimo the Elder, founder in the 1430s of what would be dynastic rule by the Medici family over Florence for many years to come. Other members: Cosimo's son Piero, called the Gouty, as the kneeling king with red mantle in the centre, Lorenzo the Magnificent as the young man at his right, in profile, with a black and red mantle.
Guasparre probably commissioned a work depicting the adoration of the Magi precisely because he was named after the first of the Magi, Caspar, who was thus considered to be his patron saint. It was common practice in medieval and Renaissance times for people to commission artworks depicting their patron saint in the hope that this saint would intercede on their behalf at the Last Judgement. When the dead are resurrected and separated into the righteous and the damned.