How to avoid bankers in your nativity scene

Evil figures may lurk in your arty Christmas cards, as Alexander Lee's The Ugly Renaissance shows

From magazine issue: 19 October 2013

The Florentine banking aristocracy worship the Christ-child in Botticelli’s ‘Adoration of the Magi’.On either side the scene is stacked with Medici sons, grandsons and associates. Credit: The Bridgeman Art Library

issue 19 October 2013

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How to avoid bankers in your nativity scene
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In the vast Benedictine monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore between Siena and Rome, the cycle of frescoes depicting the life of St Benedict by Giovanni Anionio Bazzi includes a charming self-portrait of the artist standing with a couple of pets at his feet, for all the world a 16th-century Italian Dorothy with a brace of Totos.