The Adoration of the Magi in Renaissance Painting
By STAN PARCHIN
December 30, 2009
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| Leonardo da Vinci (Italian, 1452-1519). Study for the Adoration of the Magi (ca. 1481). Pen, watercolored-brown ink and white lead with metal point traces on light brown paper. 16.2 x 29 cm (6.4 x 11.4 in.). Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe degli Uffizi. © Soprintendenza Speciale Polo Museale Fiorentino. Photograph provided by the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. |
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| Leonardo da Vinci (Italian, 1452-1519). Adoration of the Magi (ca.1481). Oil on panel. 24.3 x 24.6 cm (95.7 x 96.9 in.). Galleria degli Uffizi. © Soprintendenza Speciale Polo Museale Fiorentino. |
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| Andrea Mantegna (Italian, ca. 1431-1506). The Adoration of the Magi (ca. 1495-1505). Distemper on linen. 54.6 x 70.7 cm (21.5 x 27.8 in.). J. Paul Getty Museum |
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| Quentin Massys (also Matsys or Metsys) (Netherlandish, 1465/66-1530). The Adoration of the Magi (1526). Oil on wood. 102.9 x 80 cm (40.5 x 31.5 in.). Photograph courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. |
A popular Christian theme in Italian and Northern Renaissance painting was the Adoration of the Magi. The New Testament's Gospel of Matthew (2:1-11) recounts how three Wise Men from the East (depicted as kings in Western European art) followed a star to the infant Jesus' manger in Bethlehem. Upon their arrival, they presented the newborn Savior with precious gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, signifying the child's importance to the destiny of mankind. The Evangelist's brief Biblical description, an inspiration for artists beginning in Late Antiquity, even captured the fertile imagination of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). This is seen in the genius' detailed perspectival study for his unfinished oil on wood altarpiece (both ca. 1479-81), a work commissioned for the monastery of San Donato a Scopeto near Florence, Italy.
Andrea Mantegna's Adoration of the Magi
The J. Paul Getty Museum's Adoration of the Magi (ca. 1495-1505) by painter, draftsman and printmaker Andrea Mantegna (ca. 1431-1506), an artist influenced by the presence of classical Roman relief sculpture in his native Padua, depicts the Christ Child blessing the three kings in the presence of his simply attired mother, the Virgin Mary, and Joseph, her husband. The Wise Men, portrayed against a neutral background, are exotically clothed. The bearded, bareheaded and reverential Caspar gives Jesus a Chinese porcelain cup full of gold coins. Next to him stands the youthful Melchior with a Turkish jasper censer rich in aromatic frankincense. The covered agate vessel held by Balthasar contains myrrh, an East African and Arabian tree resin used in ancient perfumes and ointments.
Varnish was applied mistakenly to Mantegna's thin linen canvas sometime after its execution for Isabella d'Este, Marchesa of Mantua (1474-1539) and a prominent patroness of the arts. The discolored preservative was sensitively removed by the Getty Museum's conservators during the composition's restoration to reveal the painting's original matte (non-glossy) finish and level of artistic sophistication achieved by Mantegna.
Quentin Massys' Three Wise Men
Acquired in 1911, a treasure of Northern Renaissance art in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is its Adoration of the Magi (1526) by Antwerp Mannerist Quentin Massys (1465/66-1530), a Dutch ironsmith trained in the Flemish tradition of painting. The outstanding oil on wood composition's half-length figures are placed directly against a foreground ledge that spatially separates the sacred narrative from its viewer.
Massys shared with Leonardo da Vinci an interest in extreme human physiognomy. In the artist's painting, Caspar, the senior magus, is portrayed as a regally attired old man weary from his sojourn to Bethlehem. The kneeling Wise Man's facial features were derived from Leonardo's Head of an Old Man (1492-97) in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. His finely wrought scepter and vessel, their designs reminiscent of contemporary Italian Renaissance metalwork, rest in front of the Virgin Mary and infant Jesus. Caspar's two royal companions, visibly in awe at the sight of the Madonna and Child, add to the work's highly expressive nature.
Sources
Ainsworth, Maryan W. and Keith Christiansen (eds.), et al. From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (exh. cat.). New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998, 368-370.
Boorsch, Suzanne, Keith Christiansen, et al. Andrea Mantegna (exh. cat.). London and New York: Royal Academy of Arts and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992, 237-238.
Carr, Dawson. Andrea Mantegna: The Adoration of the Magi. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1997.