fferences between the painting and the actual story in the Bible show thevast misconceptions (or if these were not misconceptions, at least misrepresentations) ofdi Nardo when painting this picture. However, these misconceptions were not di Nardo'salone. Whether these were commonly held beliefs at the time that "Adoration of theMagi" was painted, I do not know. What I do know however, is that when I initiallystarted looking at the painting I did not notice anything "wrong" with it. In fact, I wasgoing to change my selection on the belief that the painting was "too straight forward." Itwas not until I started carefully looking at the notes I had taken about the picture and thenotes I had taken about the verses in Matthew that I noticed these subtle differences. Ihad never read that section of the Bible before and through years of Christmas songs, andsetting up the manger with Wise Men and the baby Jesus in my living room at Christmastime, I had come to believe that that there were three Wise Men. They were "three kingsfrom Bethlehem." They visited Jesus in the manger with the cows and the sheep. Thisshows that what is conventionally believed is not necessarily accurate. We see thisclearly in "Adoration of the Magi," which initially looks perfectly okay to the popularJudeo-Christian eye, but upon closer inspection holds many of the commonmisconceptions of the three Wise Men....
