Adorazione dei Magi

Around 1494 a couple from Antwerp, Peeter Scheyfve and Agnes de Gramme, paid Hieronymus Bosch for this altarpiece, and you can find them kneeling on the side panels as donors. The centre looks at first like an ordinary Adoration, the three kings come to the newborn Christ in a broken-down shed. Then you notice the doorway. A pale, half-naked figure crowds there in a strange headdress, watching, and scholars have long argued he is meant to be the Antichrist lurking at the very hour of Christ's birth. Behind, the ruined stable teems with small ominous life, an owl above the loft eyeing a dead mouse. The rich brocade robes of the kings carry oddly pagan scenes worked into their cloth.