And Kings Shall Come

For the first time in Europe, this painting represents one of the ‘Three Kings’ (i.e., one of the Magi referred to in Matthew 2) as an Amerindian.

The Adoration of the Kings constitutes one of eighteen panels painted between 1502 and 1506 by Vasco Fernandes and Francisco Henriques for the high altarpiece of Viseu Cathedral, in central Portugal. Only in 1500 had Europeans landed in modern-day Brazil, with a Portuguese fleet led by Pedro Alvares Cabral. His ancestors were buried in the Viseu Cathedral, which helps explain the local interest in the New World inhabitants. The first letters about the Tupinambá described their feathered headdresses and weapons (ibirapema), comparable to those of the central king in the Adoration, though his exotic jewellery and European clothing are fanciful (Chicagana-Bayona 2004: 107).

Crucially, given that the artists had not seen Amerindians in person, the texts specified that they were ‘brown’ and ‘innocent’. The dark-skinned king bears a black ceramic (?) container containing grains, surely frankincense, which allowed viewers to identify it with the incense in the prophecy in the book of Isaiah (60:6). Mary hands Joseph the golden vessel of the kneeling eldest king, who has presented a gold coin to the Christ child. This unusual detail is held up to show an armillary sphere, the personal and royal device of King Manuel of Portugal. The container carried by the youngest king, at left, must hold myrrh.

Like the rest of the altarpiece, the Adoration is based on Flemish paintings, but those prototypes typically showed one king as Black. The colouration reflects the belief, derived in part from Isaiah, that one of the Three Kings came from Sheba (v.6), typically identified with Africa or India.

In 1495, Columbus, however, had announced that Sheba was Cuba (Trexler 1997: 137). Perhaps some Portuguese also placed it in the New World, which was then often confused with India. Certainly, the painting indicates that Amerindians were seen as future Christians under the rule of Portuguese kings. 

References

Chicagana-Bayona, Yobenj Aucardo. 2004. ‘Imago Gentilis Brasilis. Modelos de Representação Pictórica do índio da Renascença’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, Universidade Federal Fluminense)

Koerner, Joseph. 2010. ‘The Epiphany of the Black Magus circa 1500’, in The Image of the Black in Western Art: From the ‘Age of Discovery’ to the Age of Abolition. Artists of the Renaissance and Baroque (vol. 3, part 1), ed. by David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates, Jr (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press)

Trexler, Richard. 1997. The Journey of the Magi: Meanings in the History of a Christian Story (Princeton: Princeton University Press)

Like other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Edward Burne-Jones found inspiration in Renaissance paintings. But this Adoration of the Kings, one of his first major works, also reveals how he reinterpreted sacred stories in those works to revitalize ecclesiastical decoration.

Commissioned for St Paul’s in Brighton, UK, the altarpiece has the traditional triptych format commonly found in Medieval and Renaissance altarpieces; here, the side panels depict the Annunciation. Burne-Jones described the work as ‘an old Venetian picture’, and his representation of the central ‘king’ as a bearded and turbaned Black man might reflect Paolo Veronese’s Adoration of the Kings (1582) in Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice.

From Italian examples, Burne-Jones could have found inspiration for the inclusion of portraits. The first king borrows facial features from the artist William Morris, whose wife Jane appears as Mary. Burne-Jones represented himself in the corner and the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne playing bagpipes, in the guise of the two shepherds at the upper right. These members of the painter’s inner circle probably indicate his personal engagement with the subject.

From his theological studies at Oxford, Burne-Jones knew that the three Magi who adored the Christ child were often associated with a passage in Isaiah 60:3 ‘Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn’. In his altarpiece, people from the distant lands of Africa and England pay homage to the Messiah, whose divine light is indicated by the star and glowing background.

In his discussion of a later Adoration by Burne-Jones, published in the aptly named Sermons in Art (1908), the Reverend James Burns interpreted the Magi’s journey as ‘the Soul’s Quest for God’, reminiscent of the Quest for the Holy Grail (Crossman 2007: 420). This offers a possible explanation for Burne-Jones’s unusual decision to represent one Magus as a knight. Perhaps the artist also agreed with Burns that the Magi were ‘pilgrims of the Spiritual Way’.

In this ‘sermon in art’, Burne-Jones depicted himself as a modern English pilgrim, searching for new ways to express his spirituality.

References

Crossman, Colette. 2007. ‘Art as Lived Religion: Edward Burne-Jones as Painter, Priest, Pilgrim, and Monk’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Maryland)

Scott, Rachel, et al. 2021–22. ‘The Making of a Triptych: The Annunciation and Adoration of the Magi 1861 by Edward Burne-Jones’, Tate Papers 34, available at https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/34/the-making-of-a-triptych-the-annunciation-and-adoration-of-the-magi-1861-by-edward-burne-jones [accessed 26 July 2022]

Wildman, Stephen and John Christian. 1998. Edward Burne-Jones, Victorian Artist-Dreamer (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Who are the three Black figures in this Adoration of the Kings, painted in the 1340s?

The Black men must hold a special significance for this anonymous artist who worked in Naples. They are the only non-Western figures in the painting or in its two known companion pieces depicting the Annunciation and Nativity (now in the Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence). Those panels once bore the symbols of the Anjou and Aragon families, probably indicating that the altarpiece was commissioned by or for the family of Robert of Anjou, King of Naples.

Royal riches abound in the Adoration, as seen in the elaborate palace and garments of Christ, the king of kings. Extremely ornate clothing, with an abundance of gold, also adorns the eldest king kneeling in the centre, his two younger companions on the left, and the angels on the right.

Isaiah 60:5 was a key source for the widespread Christian belief that the Magi mentioned by Matthew 2 were kings who came from afar.

The artist evokes the ‘wealth of the nations’ brought as tribute from these visiting ‘kings’. The prophet then referred to camels coming from Midian, Ephah, and Sheba. Perhaps this passage inspired an artist who had never seen camels to create the three unusual-looking animals visible behind the standing kings.

The absence of halos indicates that these individuals, like the comparable ones in the Nativity, are not holy figures. Neither kings nor attendants, the Black men probably reflect the group of Christian Africans who in the early 1300s travelled to Avignon, and then Rome, to pay homage to the Pope (Kaplan 1985: 12). An account written before 1330 described this remarkable event and identified the visitors as ambassadors from the ‘emperor of the Christian Ethiopians’ (Bausi and Chiesa 2019: 28). Many Europeans believed the ruler had descended from one of the three Kings. The ‘ambassadors’, most probably pilgrims, provided living proof of Christian communities beyond Europe.

Perhaps the artist even saw the Africans in person, given the unusually accurate representation of their physiognomy and clothing. He then transformed an ephemeral event into a timeless image to indicate the global reach of Christianity.

References

Bausi, Alessandro and Paolo Chiesa. 2019. ‘The Ystoria Ethiopie in the Cronica Universalis of Galvaneus de La Flamma (d. c.1345)’, Aethiopica 22: 1–51

Kaplan, Paul H. D. 1985. The Rise of the Black Magus in Western Art (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press)

Powell, Mark Allan. 2000. ‘The Magi as Kings: An Adventure in Reader-Response Criticism’, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 62: 459–80