The Star of the Magi competes with the Angel for the place of honour on the ridge-pole of the stable. Giotto began the tradition: enraptured by the passage of Halley’s comet in 1301, he was the first to paint the star above the Stable in the fresco of the Adoration of the Magi in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. In home-made nativity scenes, often the comet is applied to the crumpled paper used to form the cave; cave or stable, there are various schools of thought but they all share the luminous and reassuring presence of the Star which, according to legend, guided the Magi to the new-born Jesus.
