"Adoration of the Magi"

A woman holds a swaddled infant at the center of a crowded stable scene, an ox and a goat pressing their heads in close from either side. To the left a grinning figure raises a hand to his mouth; on the right several bearded men crowd forward, one in a striped shirt reaching toward the child, their bare feet planted in the straw.

The scene glows in saturated reds and oranges, broken by patches of blue and green, giving the whole an overheated light. Faces are pushed toward caricature, painted in thick, loaded strokes with visible impasto and dripping edges. The crowding of grotesque heads around the serene mother creates a mood that is at once tender and unsettling.