Adoration of the Magi
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The Adoration of the Magi is the name traditionally given to a Christian religious scene in which the three Magi, almost always represented as kings, having found Jesus by following a star, lay before him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh: in the church calendar, this event is commemorated as the Feast of the Epiphany. Christian iconography has considerably expanded the bare account given in the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew (2:1-11) and used it to press the point that Jesus was recognized, from his earliest infancy, as king of the earth.
For this reason, the three kings are shown as diverse as possible, and the scene often includes a fair diversity of animals as well: the ox and ass from the Nativity scene are usually there, but also the horses, camels, dogs, and falcons of the kings and their retinue, and sometimes other animals, such as birds in the rafters of the stable. The Adoration of the Magi is occasionally also conflated with the Adoration of the Shepherds from the account in the Gospel of Luke (2:8‑20), an opportunity to bring in yet more human and animal diversity; in some compositions (triptychs for example), the two scenes are contrasted or set as pendants to the central scene, usually a Nativity.
Medieval artists usually expressed this human diversity by depicting the three ages of man: a particularly beautiful example is seen on the façade of the cathedral of Orvieto. Since the Age of Discoveries, on the other hand, the Magi are frequently made to represent three parts of the world, and the diversity tends to be racial: Balthasar is very commonly cast as an African or Moor, and Caspar is sometimes given Oriental features. From the artist's standpoint, the Adoration of the Magi is often a bravura piece in which the artist can display their handling of complex, crowded scenes involving horses and camels, but also their rendering of varied textures: the silk, fur, jewels and gold of the Kings set against the wood of the stable, the straw of Jesus's manger and the rough clothing of Joseph and the shepherds.
The usefulness of the subject to the Church and the technical challenges involved in representing it have made the Adoration of the Magi a favorite subject of Christian art: chiefly painting, but also also sculpture and even music (as in Gian Carlo Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors).
Treatment by individual artists
Many hundreds of artists have treated the subject. A very partial list of the most celebrated follow, reading like a who's-who of painters:
- Gentile da Fabriano's Adoration of the Magi, now in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, is probably the most famous painting of the scene.
- Bosch: Museo del Prado, Madrid
- Botticelli: Uffizi Gallery, Florence
- Pieter Brueghel the Younger: National Gallery, Prague
- Dürer: Uffizi Gallery, Florence
- Fra Angelico: Museo S. Marco, Florence
- Ghirlandaio: Spedale degli Innocenti, Florence
- Benozzo Gozzoli: Convent of S. Marco, Florence
- Leonardo da Vinci: Uffizi Gallery, Florence
- Filippo Lippi: National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
- Lo Spagna: altarpiece, Museo S. Francesco, Trevi
- Mantegna: Getty Museum
- Masaccio: predella from the Pisa altarpiece: Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
- Memling: Museo del Prado, Madrid
- Murillo: Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio
- Nicola Pisano: Baptistry, Pisa
- Perugino: fresco, church of the Madonna delle Lacrime, Trevi; fresco, Oratorio dei Bianchi, Città della Pieve; National Gallery of Umbrian Art, Perugia
- Poussin: Gemäldegalerie, Dresden
- Rubens: Royal Fine Arts Museum, Antwerp
- Tiepolo: Alte Pinakothek, Munich
- Velazquez: Museo del Prado, Madrid
- Rogier van der Weyden: St Columba Altarpiece, Alte Pinakothek, Munich