The Adoration of the Magi

As a subject in art, the Adoration of the Magi illustrates the events described in Matthew 2:1–12 and elaborated in the liturgical festivity known by the Greek name of ‘Epiphany’ or ‘Manifestation’. The central meaning of the Adoration for Christians is in fact articulated in 1 Timothy 3:16, which says that Christ, the Messiah promised to the Jews, was also ‘proclaimed to the gentiles, believed throughout the world’.

Matthew’s Gospel was written for a Jewish public, and his account of Wise Men ‘from the east’ bringing gifts to honour the child whose ‘star’ they had seen rise realizes Isaiah’s words to the Chosen People: ‘The nations will come to your light and kings to your dawning brightness’ (60:3 NJB).

A sixth-century mosaic in the church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna suggests this inter-cultural message, showing the Magi clothed in garments that would have looked exotic to a Western audience, wearing ‘Phrygian’ (Anatolian) caps, and advancing with their gifts among palm trees. The mosaic, which gives the Wise Men’s traditional names—Balthasar, Melchior, Gaspar—, is part of a larger programme, and visitors to Sant’Apollinare see the Magi approaching figures of Mary and the baby Jesus, in reference to Matthew’s statement that, when the star they followed halted, they finally saw the Child and his mother (Matthew 2:10–11).

Behind the Magi in the Ravenna mosaic, we see a procession of female martyrs who also advance toward Christ. These evoke a further meaning attributed to this event by Christian theologians. One of the gifts brought by the Magi, myrrh, was an unguent used to embalm the dead, and Christ’s manifestation to all nations was thus seen to include the mystery of his death: an interpretation legitimated by Matthew’s insistence on King Herod’s attempt to eliminate the baby Jesus, killing all infants of the same age (Matthew 2:13–16). The women martyrs following the Magi in the mosaic had shared Christ’s death.   

In 1459, the chapel of the then new Medici mansion in Florence was decorated with frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli depicting the journey of the Magi mentioned in Matthew 2:1. Commissioned by the city’s wealthiest family, the frescoes stress the material splendour of the attire, mounts, and equipages of the Magi and of their entourage, situating the gifts of ‘gold, frankincense and myrrh’ in a context of magnificence in evident harmony with the sumptuous appointments of the Medici residence itself. 

At the same time, the original programme was remarkably faithful to the Gospel account and included an altarpiece representing the new-born Christ adored by his mother, and—above this—a small circular window symbolizing the star whose light guided the wise men. The Medici, who belonged to a lay confraternity which every year staged the Journey of the Magi in the streets of Florence, clearly knew all the details.

The chapel’s true iconographic key is above its outer door, however, where a fresco shows a Lamb on an altar, beneath whose recumbent body hang seven seals. It illustrates Revelation 5:6–12, which speaks of the Lamb who was sacrificed and with his blood bought for God people ‘of every race, language, people and nation’. This external image invites those entering the chapel to interpret the Wise Men’s rich offerings in light of the hymn raised in Revelation: ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was sacrificed to receive power, riches, wisdom, strength, honour, glory, and blessing’ (5:12 NJB). The Lamb of the hymn corresponds to the Child shown in the chapel’s altarpiece, object of the Wise Men’s quest; the sacrifice by which he bought for God people of every race was that of his body, made present in the Eucharist celebrated at the altar.

This monumental altarpiece signed by Cristobal de Villalpando (1649–1714), an artist born in Mexico City of an influential Spanish family, is one of many exuberantly Baroque religious works by this master, several still in place in Mexican churches.

Cristobal, trained in Mexico City by Baltasar de Echave Rioja, son of one of the first Hispanic artists to emigrate to ‘New Spain’ (as Mexico was then known), was inspired by the style of the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, whose works he could have known through engravings. Like the Flemish painter, his colonial emulator treated sacred themes with theatrical verve, giving pride of place to rich costumes and grandiloquent gestures.

His Adoration of the Magi presents the Wise Men as kings, clothing the kneeling personage at the centre in an ermine-bordered mantle and setting a crown atop the turban of the standing figure at our left. The other standing figure (just above the kneeling king) has black skin, reinforcing the traditional belief that the Wise Men who journeyed to Bethlehem represented all human civilizations and ethnicities. He also reminds us that seventeenth-century New Spain forced enslaved people from Africa to work in its mines and plantations in this period.

In colonial Mexico, whose gold, silver, and cane sugar enriched its Spanish rulers, Cristobal de Villalpando stresses the tribute of wealth implied by the Magi’s gifts, evoking Jerusalem’s future splendour as described in Isaiah 60:3–5:

The nations will come to your light and kings to your dawning brightness. … At this sight you will grow radiant, your heart will throb and dilate, since the riches of the sea will flow to you, and the wealth of the nations come to you. (NJB)

In such a context, the inclusion of a Black man among the Magi might perhaps also have troubled the reigning assumptions of those who were prosecuting Spain’s colonial project with the help of enslaved people.

Maybe it caused other hearts to ‘throb’ than those of the mine and plantation owners.