L'Adoration des Mages

Salomon Koninck worked in Amsterdam in the shadow of Rembrandt, close enough that his paintings were sometimes sold under the older man's name. This nighttime Adoration, from around 1650, shows why: the deep shadow, the warm light pooling on Mary and the child, the crowd of kings and servants half-swallowed by darkness. The three kings present their gold, frankincense and myrrh in a slow procession. Koninck came from a family of Antwerp cloth merchants who had moved north, and he keeps one southern habit here, the boys lifting the hems of the kings' heavy robes, a motif the painter Rubens had made popular back in Antwerp.