The representations of adoration of the Three Kings in Venice

In all the best nativities the Three Wise Men are among the main characters and also in arts there are numerous representations of these mysterious astrological  scholars.

Very often, in Venice this type of images also served to give various messages representing one of the Three Wise Men with the portrait of a contemporary character.

For example, in the Doge's Palace, in the Militia da Mar Hall (where the officers were recruited for the Venetian fleet) there is a painting by Giandomenico Tiepolo in which instead of the King Gaspar is the Doge of the time (probably Paolo Renier); of course it was the Doge who commissioned the painting with a clear political intent!

The message could also be of a religious nature, as in the famous Adoration of the Three Wise Men, painted by Jacopo Tintoretto for the Sala Terrena of the Scuola Grande of St Rocco in 1582. One of the Three Wise Men represented in the painting, on the right at the bottom, looks impressively like Guillaume Postel, a French theologian suspected of heresy (he announced the arrival of a second Messiah woman, the Venetian nun Giovanna), who lived in Venice around 1542 and who definitely knew great painters.

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