The Adoration of the Magi

While no autograph works by Rogier van der Weyden are known that could have been used as the direct model for this panel, the composition is based on a Rogierian drawing of the same subject in the Städel Museum, Frankfurt-am-Main (fig. 1), which probably dates to the mid-fifteenth century, perhaps as late as around 1470. The origins of the drawing are similarly obscure, but it seems to have stemmed from a pattern that had been established in the workshop of Robert Campin (also called the Master of Flémalle), and popularised by his circle amongst painters like Rogier van der Weyden and Jacques Daret (see for example his depiction of the same subject in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin). Another comparable drawing, formerly attributed to Campin, but now likewise attributed to an anonymous Netherlandish artist working in the mid-fifteenth century, is in the collection of the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin. These drawings were evidently widely circulated, and the present Adoration forms part of a small group of works, painted in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, which followed and adapted their compositions. A painting in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, published by Winkler in 1960 for example, is strikingly similar to the present picture and quite clearly shared a very close common model (see ‘Die Anbetung der König emit dem Baldachin von Robert Campin’, Mouseion: Studien aud Kunst und Geschichte für Otto H. Förster, H. Ladendorf and H. Vey (eds.), Cologne, 1960, p. 138, fig. 147). Though reliant on Netherlandish prototypes, this Adoration of the Magi may not be the work of a Netherlandish painter. Likely dating to the early decades of the sixteenth century, it is possible that the picture is in fact by a painter working in Cologne or Westphalia, regions where the influence of van der Weyden remained strong during this period, and also where devotion to the Three Magi (whose major relics were kept at Cologne Cathedral) was widespread.

We are grateful to Dr. Valentine Henderiks and Sacha Zdanov for their assistance in the cataloguing and preparation of this entry.