Adoration of the Magi

Rubens painted this Adoration of the Magi around 1617, in Antwerp, at the height of a career run like a business, a large workshop and a stream of prints and tapestries carrying his compositions across Europe. The clue here is the shape. Most Adorations stand tall over an altar, but this one is wide, built like a stage, which suggests it was meant for a private house rather than a church. Into that broad space Rubens crowds the whole event, the three kings in heavy robes, their servants, camels and horses jostling in the dark toward the child, torchlight and gold catching on armour and skin. In 1698 the Elector of Bavaria bought it in Antwerp along with a dozen other Rubens paintings, and this one later drifted from the rest before ending up in Lyon.