Adoration of the Magi

Four of the five paintings by Hendrick van Balen in the Prado are small glittering allegories set inside garlands of fruit. This one stands apart. It is a religious panel a metre and a third tall, the scale of something meant to stand above an altar, and there was a great deal of that work going in Antwerp in his lifetime, its churches being refurnished after the Calvinist years had stripped them. The museum will not fix a year on the picture. Its entry says only late 16th century to the first third of the 17th, and links the panel to the altarpieces van Balen was turning out around 1615, when he was among the busiest painters in the city for that kind of commission. On the back of the wood his name is written in ink, H V BALEN, with an old inventory number beside it.