The Adoration of the Magi

The Adoration of the Magi

The Adoration of the Magi

Artist:Hieronymus Bosch (Netherlandish, ’s Hertogenbosch ca. 1450–1516 ’s Hertogenbosch)
Date:ca. 1475
Medium:Oil and gold on oak
Dimensions:28 x 22 1/4in. (71.1 x 56.5cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:John Stewart Kennedy Fund, 1913

Technical examination demonstrates that this panel, long thought to be a later pastiche, is among Bosch's earliest works. The tunneling perspective and certain of the rather wooden figure types with sensitively rendered faces relate to other early paintings by the master. The stagelike setting, with a curtain held aloft by angels, may indicate the influence of religious plays performed in Bosch’s hometown of 's Hertogenbosch.

Catalogue Entry
The Artist: This work has always been associated with Hieronymous Bosch (1450–1516), an enormously creative and eccentric painter who was born in 's-Hertogenbosch in the northern Netherlands. Bosch grew up in a family of painters, and in 1481 he married the daughter of a wealthy and prominent patrician. Himself among the elite of society, Bosch joined the Brotherhood of Our Lady and thereby had contact with important foreigners who commissioned paintings from him. His novel landscapes, moralizing subjects, and fantastic creatures of all kinds made him much sought after as a painter not only locally but especially abroad in Spain and Italy. Long after Bosch’s death, copies, pastiches, and imitations were produced to satisfy the ongoing market demand for his unusual works.
The Painting: This idiosyncratic treatment of the highly popular theme of the Adoration of the Magi stresses discontinuities of time and space, and juxtaposes the extraordinary wealth of the magi with poor peasants and shepherds. All is anachronistically staged in a contemporary setting where in the background ordinary people, pursuing mundane activities, populate a vast landscape.
In the ruins of a late medieval castle the Virgin, holding the Christ Child, humbly sits on a cushion on a wooden floor that is spread with a golden cloth. As the aged Joseph looks on, the Child turns his attention to the three magi, who have arrived bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh (Matthew 2:11). Unlike The Met’s painting by Quentin Metsys (11.143), in which the magi ardently gesture their adoration of the Child, this painting instead focuses on the presentation of the gifts. The oldest magus offers a pearl-and-gem-decorated, golden ewer and basin, an indication of Christ’s kingly status. A second, crowned and turbaned magus brings a magnificent Gothic ciborium holding myrrh, which, because of its use in burial practices, foreshadows Christ’s death. The African magus holds a spherical ciborium of frankincense topped by a large golden bird that appears to be pricking its own breast. This could be a pelican, which pricks its breast to feed its young with its own blood, symbolizing Christ’s sacrifice and redemption of mankind. The bird has otherwise been identified as a phoenix, who, legend has it, feeds on the incense filling its nest that ultimately bursts into flame. The phoenix rising from the ashes of the nest is symbolic of the resurrected Christ (see Ilsink et al. 2016). Although the golden vessels are abraded, no longer revealing the detailed design of their facture, they once represented highly prized contemporary luxury objects. Great attention has also been paid to the lavish costumes of the magi. The weaponry of the African magus, for example, likewise rendered in gold, consists of a fist shield, or buckler, which hangs from the scabbard of his scimitar, suspended from a sword belt. The pommel of the scimitar is shaped like an animal’s head and a loop hangs from it, which was most likely meant to be attached to a chain that served as a knuckle guard.
The vast space—carefully planned in the proper perspective of a tunnel view into the landscape, and punctuated by a peasant peeking through a window at the left and shepherds warming themselves by the fire at the right, a particularly sympathetic ox, and a regal-looking dog—presents a stage-like setting with a curtain held aloft by angels. This may reflect the influence of Mystery Plays that were performed in ‘s-Hertogenbosch by the Brotherhood of Our Lady of which Bosch and his father were members. According to Schürmeyer (1923), and based on the 1907 archival research of C. F. Xavier Smits, Bosch and his father not only performed in the Mystery Plays, but also painted decorations and costumes for them. As Lucas van Dijck points out, however, surviving records of the Brotherhood indicate that payments for such plays occurred only once every seven years and they generally date later than The Met's painting (Lucas van Dijck, De Bossche Optimaten, Tilberg, 1973, p. 110).
The Attribution and Date: Initially The Met's painting was considered autograph and among the earliest of Bosch’s works (Friedländer 1912, Baldass 1917, and others in Refs.). However, the authoritative voice of Charles de Tolnay (1937 and 1965) cast doubt on the attribution when he listed it with contested works, calling it a pastiche, and noting that the figures are archaic in style while the landscape corresponds to the more evolved style of the "second epoque.” As the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch were extremely popular during the artist’s lifetime and well into the sixteenth century, for many years the Museum's painting was believed to have been painted after Bosch, with the use of workshop patterns of various motifs in answer to the high demand for paintings in his style. A copy of The Met's painting (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam), attributed to the studio of Hieronymus Bosch and dated to about 1550 (dendrochronology indicating an earliest felling date of the tree for the planks of 1534; see Klein 2001 and Garrido and Van Schoute 2001) initially seemed to support the notion that the Museum's painting was a later pastiche of Boschian motifs (Ainsworth 1992 and Sperling 1998).
A 2001 exhibition in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the technical investigation of Bosch paintings in the Prado, and an early Netherlandish drawings exhibition including works by Bosch at the Rubenshuis, Antwerp, in 2002 (see Garrido and Van Schoute 2001) led to the reexamination of the artist’s oeuvre. The Met painting was one of several that were reconsidered thereafter, and it once again regained its autograph status (Ainsworth 2004). More recently with renewed investigations of Bosch’s oeuvre for the 500th anniversary year of his death in 2016, Koreny (2012) and the Bosch Research and Conservation Project (Ilsink et al. 2016) have both included The Met's Adoration of the Magi among the artist's most important early works.
Infrared reflectography has revealed that the underdrawing of The Met's Adoration is executed in brush, Bosch’s preferred tool for the preliminary layout of his compositions on panel (see fig. 1 above). This sketch summarily describes some of the features of the landscape, and works out the figures of the magi, the Virgin, and the Child in greater detail. Numerous modifications made in the drawing of the draperies of the magi’s garments, as well as changes introduced from the underdrawing to the painted layers indicate an ongoing creative process, not a copy of a pre-existing work. Such alterations include the profile of the head of the kneeling king, an angel in the upper left turret window that was overpainted and replaced with a dove, and the peasant leaning out of the window at the left who was painted over the completed brick wall (see Technical Notes). Furthermore, the style of the underdrawing closely compares to that in the Ecce Homo (Städel Museum, Frankfurt), an accepted Bosch painting dating about 1480–90 (figs. 8–9; for further discussion on the dating, see Jochen Sander, Kataloge der Gemälde im Städelschen Kunstinstitut Frankfurt am Main II, Niederländische Gemälde im Städel 1400–1600, Mainz am Rhein, 1993, p. 42). For example, the underdrawing found in the cloak of the magistrate at the right of Christ in the Städel painting and in the robe of the black king in The Met's painting both show even parallel hatching in brush oriented in various directions to suggest the modelling of the figures, and here and there placed so closely together that they form a wash-like application in areas of the deepest shadow. The multi-directional, even parallel hatching in the underdrawing of the upper portion of the black magus’s robe is also characteristic of the execution in Bosch’s drawing, Two Old Women, of about 1480–90 (recto, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam). The undermodelling of the face of the bearded standing king in the New York painting may be compared to another Bosch drawing, the Two Oriental Men (recto, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin) of about 1500. Here, the modelling of the face of the man at the right in the drawing mimics the dark undermodelling of the painted head where comparable short, rounded brushstrokes cross over each other to create a zone of volume and shadow in the cheeks (image forthcoming).
The dimensions of the Frankfurt Ecce Homo and The Met's painting are very close to each other (71.1 x 60.5 cm and 71.1 x 56.5 cm), and both depend on the compositional device of a tunnel-like perspective. Each painting shows similar ruled, incised lines in the ground preparation for the perspective system, but only The Met's example achieves their coordination to more-or-less one point (see Technical Notes and fig. 3; and Sander, p. 38). The broad brushwork in each is similar and the paint, likewise, has a somewhat pasty quality. The face of the standing bearded king here and the face of Pilate in the Frankfurt panel are much alike in physiognomy as are the heads of the onlookers at the lower right in the Frankfurt painting and the kneeling king in The Met's Adoration. The faces of the figures in both are as subtly expressive as they are sensitively rendered, even though their bodies appear rather wooden in keeping with Bosch’s early style. The Ecce Homo dates to around 1480–90, and The Met's panel is most likely slightly earlier, about 1475 (the earliest felling date of the tree for the panels is 1466, and an earliest creation date about 1468; see Klein 2001 and Garrido and Van Schoute 2001).
This would place the Museum's Adoration among Bosch’s earliest works, along with the Garden of Earthly Delights (Museo del Prado, Madrid; 1458 is the terminus ante quem for the earliest felling date of the tree that provided the planks for the panel; see Klein 2001), which explains the close similarity of the head of the Adoration’s Virgin Mary with the head of the Garden’s Eve. The Prado Adoration of the Magi to which The Met's painting is often compared is a later treatment of the theme of about 1495, and more ambitious in terms of its composition as well as sophisticated in handling and execution.
Theories about Original Function and Location: Noting the similarities between the New York and Frankfurt panels in size, Bernard Vermet (Koldeweij et al. 2001) suggested that they once formed part of a cycle of the Life of Christ. Jos Koldeweij stressed the importance of the 1606–9 chronicle of the history of s’-Hertogenbosch from its origins to the year 1565, the Historia chronologica oppidi Buscoducis, produced by three learned aldermen (Everswyn, Loeff, and Van Balen). Therein they describe the interior of the Church of Saint John, in particular the chapel of the Confraternity of Our Lady, decorated with paintings by Bosch. Along with the statue of the Virgin in the chapel was an altarpiece by Bosch of the presentation of the gifts by the three kings. Whether this was The Met's painting, the Rotterdam copy, the triptych today in the Maison d’Erasme, Anderlecht (the latter two by Bosch followers), or some now-lost work cannot at present be determined. However, the emphasis in The Met's panel on the presentation of the gifts, unusually for Bosch painted in expensive gold rather than illusionistically in lead-tin yellow, points to an important commission. It also recalls Bosch’s close friendship with two other masters of s’-Hertogenbosch: Alart Duhameel, a master builder, sculptor, and engraver who oversaw the late-Gothic construction of Saint John’s Church, and Michiel van Gemert, a goldsmith and engraver of knives and other metal objects. Bosch’s detailed rendering of the extraordinary golden gifts for the Christ Child in The Met's painting likely derived from his first-hand knowledge of designs by his talented friends, and possibly from the existence of such precious objects in the Chapel of the Confraternity of Our Lady in the Church of Saint John.
[2012; updated and revised by Maryan W. Ainsworth 2016]

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