Adoration of the Magi

The Philadelphia lawyer John G. Johnson bought Old Masters by the hundred and left them all to his city in 1917, among them eight panels he was sure were by Hieronymus Bosch. When an international team went through those pictures with dendrochronology, dating the oak, and close examination, seven fell away. This Adoration of the Magi is the one that held. The museum now leans toward Bosch's own hand, though the caution of an older label, follower of, still trails the picture. It shows the three kings arriving before the Christ child, the kind of crowded, watchful scene Bosch built from small strange faces. The wood it is painted on is what moved the argument, ring by ring.