The Artist: For a biography of Gerard David, see
“Gerard David (born about 1455, died 1523).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.The Painting: This beautifully composed Adoration of the Magi once was the centerpiece of a triptych flanked by a
Night Nativity (at the left) and a
Presentation in the Temple (at the right) that are currently in a European private collection (sold Christie’s, London, July 7, 2006, no. 122). The outside wings, when closed, showed the
Annunciation (split from the interior wings, whereabouts unknown; see the reconstruction in fig. 1 above). Many of the elements of this triptych derive from works by Gerard David.
The Adoration of the Magi is indebted to David’s painting of the same subject of around 1510–15 in the National Gallery, London (fig. 2). It generally adopts the London painting’s composition in which the magi and their entourage, entering a palace in ruins from the right, present their gifts to the Christ Child, sitting in the Virgin’s lap at the far left in the foreground. Each painting presents a city and landscape view, featured like a separately framed vignette, at the center of the picture. In The Met's painting, however, this distant view takes on more prominence and divides the sensitively painted kneeling kings, Virgin and Child, and Joseph at the left, from the animated and more broadly painted group of dandies at the right, who follow the lavishly dressed and elegantly posed Moorish king. The
Annunciation of the outside wings relates generally to David’s composition from the
Cervara Altarpiece of 1506 (The Met,
50.145.9ab). The interior left wing
Night Nativity is a version of a painting by David in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, but the
Presentation in the Temple of the right wing is not a composition known in David’s extant works.
Attribution and Date: Although close to Gerard David in terms of composition and figure types, the majority of this painting was made by an artist—probably in David’s workshop—who could not match the refinement of his master’s handling and execution. Max J. Friedländer (1929) and Leo van Puyvelde (1962) attributed the work to the Master of Hoogstraeten, an Antwerp artist whose works include three other versions of The Met's picture (on the art market, P. de Boer, 1933, with shutters in Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; in the Mayer van den Bergh Museum, Antwerp; and in the Philadelphia Museum of Art). Although the style and technique of The Met's painting are not close enough to the Master of Hoogstraeten to link it firmly to this master (see Mund et al. 2003), the features of the reconstructed triptych do relate to Antwerp painting of around 1520. The
Adoration of the Magi was the single most popular theme produced for open-market sale in that city at the time. The expansive view into the distance, showing travelers transporting goods, was a common feature of Adoration scenes, as another Antwerp Master’s work at The Met shows (
21.132.2). The popularity of such vignettes was related to the city’s predominance as the economic hub of Western Europe in the early sixteenth century, and the center of the import-export business. Thus the theme of travel, especially with luxury goods, was related to the very important excursion of the magi with special gifts to the Christ Child, conflating modern life with religious narrative. The subjects of the two interior wings, the Night Nativity and the Presentation in the Temple, are often found in Antwerp Mannerist triptychs. The Presentation in the Temple, not a featured subject in David’s oeuvre, was frequently connected with the Adoration of the Magi, especially in the oeuvre of the Master of 1518 and Pieter Coecke van Aelst, two of Antwerp’s most important painters.
A record in the Antwerp Archives, published by Rombouts and Van Lerius in 1961, states that in 1515 Gerard David, the famous painter long-established in Bruges, joined the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp as a Master (Philippe Rombouts and Théodore François Xavier Van Lerius,
De Liggeren en andere historisch archieven der Antwerpse St.-Lucasgilde, vol. 1, Amsterdam, 1961 [reprint of 1864–76 edition], p. 83). Payments David continued to make on his house in Bruges in subsequent years imply that he did not move to Antwerp, and he did not take on any apprentices there, probably indicating that his workshop remained in Bruges. Most likely, David joined the Antwerp guild for commercial reasons, that is, in order to be able to sell paintings in what had become a more robust art market than Bruges at that time. This information is of particular interest in regard to The Met's
Adoration of the Magi.
There are intriguing details of the facture of the
Adoration that reveal that David may well have maintained quality control over such triptychs that issued from his Bruges workshop for sale in Antwerp. Examination with infrared reflectography revealed that the figures and the architectural elements were underdrawn in a liquid medium with loose, summary strokes, in a style different than that characteristic of Gerard David (fig. 3). Here and there lines are broken with dashes, as if the artist was copying from a model. Although mostly painted by a workshop assistant, the
Adoration shows that the treatment of the figures of the Virgin and Child and the two kneeling kings stand out from the rest for their far more refined handling and sensitive rendering, especially of the faces, as Micheline Comblen-Sonkes already noted (1983; unpublished opinion in departmental archives). The Virgin’s head is quite close stylistically and in terms of the paint handling to the head of the Virgin in David’s London
Adoration of the Magi. The x-radiograph of the painting reveals significant differences in radio-opacity especially between the heads of the Virgin and eldest Magus, and the other figures (see Technical Notes and fig. 4). In addition, infrared reflectography shows that the features of the face of this Magus were significantly shifted in level and direction (fig. 3). This, added to the greater radio-opacity evident in the x-radiograph of the heads of the Virgin and eldest Magus, and the more refined handling and execution of both, suggest that a second hand, namely Gerard David, repainted these heads. He probably also painted the Christ Child and the second kneeling Magus. Such interventions by the master, which were not uncommon, before the painting left the workshop, guaranteed a certain level of quality for which Gerard David was well known, and perhaps helped to insure sales on the thriving and competitive open market in Antwerp (Ainsworth 2018).
Maryan W. Ainsworth 2016