Initial E: The Adoration of the Magi, leaf from a gradual

From the Getty Museum record

This leaf comes from a Christian choir book made for the Infirmary of Santa Maria della Scala in Siena, illuminated by Sano di Pietro around 1462. Introducing the beginning of the Feast of the Epiphany, the brightly colored initial *E* shows the three magi presenting their gifts to Christ. The heads of two of the kings were never completed, providing a rare glimpse of the processes involved in the completion of an illumination; here, the artist reserved the most important parts for the end. The delicate figures, the composition, and the marginal decoration (including a harlequin heron) are characteristic of the mature style of the Sienese artist Sano di Pietro.