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adoration of the Magi, a theme in Christian art illustrating the visit to the infant Christ by the Wise Men from the East, who, guided by the a star, came to worship the Child as king of the Jews, bringing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The event is described in the Gospel According to Matthew, and it is one of the oldest and most popular themes in Christian art, first appearing in fresco in Roman catacomb decoration of the 2nd century. Before state recognition of the Christian religion in the 4th century, the adoration of the Magi was one of the few New Testament scenes to be illustrated and the only one to be shown with regularity. Its frequent appearance among Old Testament scenes may be explained by its special doctrinal significance:
the event represents the first manifestation of Christ’s divinity to the Gentiles and thus symbolizes an extremely important concept in the eyes of the early church, the spreading of Christianity to the world outside Palestine and its ascendancy over paganism (especially since the Magi were assumed to be doctors of the Persian faith of Zoroastrianism).
Early Christian (c. 2nd century—c. 6th century) representations of the adoration of the Magi show between two and five Wise Men (their number is not specified by Matthew and had not yet been fixed at three), dressed in the conventional Roman version of Persian cost tume: Phrygian caps, short cloaks, tunics, and tightly fitting trousers. They approach an enthroned Madonna and Child either from both sides (the version predominant in Early Christian art) or in a line with the Virgin and Child seated at the edge of the composition. The latter format was standard throughout the Mid- die Ages.
After the 4th century, the adoration of the Magi became, with other New Testament scenes, an important subject in the decoration of Early Christian basiicas. At the end of the 5th century, the number of Magi was fixed at three to correspond with their three gifts, which symbolized royalty, divinity, and sacrifice. By the end of the 6th century, they had acquired their traditional names, Melchior, Balthasar, and Gaspar, and were increasingly differentiated by age; Melchior was shown as an old man with a long beard, Balthasar as a bearded middle-aged man, and Gaspar as a youth. In the late Middle Ages one of the Magi, sometimes Balthasar and sometimes Gaspar, was often portrayed as a Moor or a Negro, and the medieval fondness for thawing numerical parallels led to the three being taken as representatives of the three races of man who accept Christ.
The tradition that the Magi were kings is an old one, based on an Old Testament allusion to the kings of the earth paying homage to a greater king (Ps. 72:10, 11), but it was not until the 10th century that the Magi began to appear with crowns instead of Phrygian caps.
The adoration of the Magi often appeared as part of the Nativity (q.v.) scene in Byzantine churches, but it was especially important as a separate theme in the West, where, in the Romanesque and Gothic periods, its significance as a primary theophany, or manifestation of Christ’s divinity, was emphasized. It was often associated with the two other major theophanies of Christ’s life: his Baptism, during which the voice of God publicly declared Jesus to be his son, and the wedding at Cana, at which he revealed his divinity by changing water into wine. The three events, all celebrated on the same feast day, were frequently represented together in the monumental sculpture that decorated the churches of these periods. In the late Middle Ages the adoration of the Magi often formed the central scene in altar- pieces, and artists gradually began to show more interest in the narrative aspects of the subject. In the 14th and 15th centuries, large numbers of the kings’ attendants were depicted in increasingly sumptuous compositions, and henceforth it became a favourite device to include portraits of the artists’ patrons among the crowd of spectators. This expansion of the theme soon necessitated a general abandonment of the traditional linear format.
In the High Renaissance, the emotional content of the scene was emphasized in compositions of great warmth and tenderness, as in works by Leonardo, Dtirer, and Giorgione, and its processional and ceremonial aspects were also appreciated and exploited by several painters of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. After the 17th century, with the general decline in Christian religious arts, the theme of the adoration of the Magi passed into the popular arts and became, in the 19th and 20th centuries, a favourite subject for Christmas cards.
