The Adoration of the Magi

The Rijksmuseum dates this small panel by Jan Mostaert to about 1520 to 1525, and suspects that one of the kings is a real man. The king in the brown hooded cloak, whose gold cup the Christ Child is reaching for, has a face too individual for a stock type, and his hooded travelling cloak was a fashionable Spanish garment of the time. He may well be the patron who paid for the picture. Now look past the Virgin at the stone gateway. Its little grey carvings tell a second story, earlier episodes read as foretelling this birth. Among them are the Tiburtine Sibyl showing the emperor Augustus a vision of the Virgin and Child, and the family tree of Christ growing from Jesse, father of King David. A cup at the front carries the words Ave Regina Caelorum, hail, Queen of Heaven.