Description
This great altarpiece is full of richly dressed peasants, animals, angels and kings and courtiers who come to adore the Child Jesus. This is the Adoration of the Kings (Matthew 2:11), when the wise men followed a star from the east and found Christ in a stable in Bethlehem.
In a palatial but dilapidated building, the Virgin Mary sits with the Christ Child on her lap. He holds a gold cup containing gold coins, the lid of which is at his feet. This is the gift of old King Gaspar, who kneels before her, with his hat and scepter on the ground. His name is inscribed on the lid in gold letters that cast shadows against a concave outer ring. Christ takes one of the coins in his left hand. The second king, Melchior, stands behind Caspar on the right and carries incense in an elaborate gold container. In front of him approaches the third king. His name runs across the top of his hat: BALTAZAR. His gift of myrrh is contained in a gold pot decorated with naked babies. Gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh are believed to symbolize, respectively, tribute, sacrifice, and burial of the dead.
Between Balthasar and the Virgin, Saint Joseph leans on his staff and looks at the angels floating in the air. Behind him, an ox sticks its head out of a door where another angel stands. A nearby donkey chews weeds. Directly behind Caspar are two shepherds, one with a musical instrument, the other with a straw hat and an implement used to herd sheep. In the distance we see the same shepherds receiving the news of the birth of Christ. Like kings, they have come to adore the Child Jesus (Lk 2, 8-18). The star that guided kings shines above the stable and the dove of the Holy Spirit hovers below it, as angels fill the sky. Some of the royal entourage huddles behind them, while others on horseback can be seen through the window to our right.
Jean Gossart has signed the painting in two places: one on Balthasar's hat and one on his assistant's silver collar. Technical analysis has revealed the skill, time and effort that Gossart put into this image. Infrared reflectograms show considerable amounts of underdrawing and many changes made at all stages. The main lines of the architecture are ruled but the rest of the drawing is freehand, with no indication that any type of mechanical transfer has been used. The drawing is detailed, down to the knuckles and fingernails, the wrinkles on the clothes, and the patterns on the textiles. Gossart often drew multiple lines to get the correct outline, for example on Caspar's nose. Heads, faces and clothes were changed; Almost all of the architecture was altered when the painting was nearing completion and some figures were painted directly onto what was behind them, including the ox, the donkey, Caspar's scepter and his cup lid. The broken floor tiles and the plants growing through them were added after the floor grid, which was laid out only after the main figures were blocked. All the underdrawings and changes appear to be Gossart's own, even down to the hasty painting of the subsidiary bosses: there are no obvious assistant interventions.
In order to expand the range of colors and tones, Gossart has mixed and layered his pigments in unusually complex ways, modeling some colors in different shades of grey. A fingerprint on the green robe of the angel behind the ox shows that Gossart wiped away the enamel with his finger. There are virtuosic passages of detail, especially in the foreground: the hairs sprouting from Caspar's cheek and the decoration on his hat; the fringes of Balthasar's stole.
Gossart drew on several sources, the most important being the Montforte Altarpiece by Hugo van der Goes (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) which inspired the magnificently dressed kings and attendants, broken architecture and flying angels. But Gossart took Hugo's views through dilapidated buildings to distant landscapes one step further, opening a great recession to distant mountains at the center of his painting. Other elements, the dogs and the details of the dress, are drawn from prints by Albrecht Dürer and Martin Schongauer. Gossart transformed them into a composition entirely his own: the dog on the right has an almost trembling alertness that is not typical of Dürer. Gossart's mastery of oil painting technique and mastery of light enabled him to make his eye glow and his nose and whiskers twitch.
The geometric arrangement of the composition gives the painting its powerful structure. The painting is divided into two horizontal registers: the celestial zone of the star, the dove and the angels, and the earthly zone of the Virgin and Child, the kings and shepherds. The figures of each do not overlap, but the zones are linked by the strong verticals of the architecture, accentuated by the sudden contrasts of light and shadow. The architecture makes no structural sense, but it does serve to emphasize the verticals in the lower area: Balthasar's gift and the ends of his scarf align with the section of wall behind, as do the brightly lit folds hanging from the right knee. of the Virgin. The heavenly and earthly figures repeat each other: Caspar's pose is not dissimilar to that of the pink angel immediately above him, while the dog in the right corner repeats his form. The figures inhabit a deep space, the sense of recession emphasized by their relative positions in the squares on the floor. The strong diagonal recession between Balthasar and Melchor is highlighted by the fact that they both mirror and invert each other's poses, and the pinks and greens of their outfits form a kind of counterpoint. Another strong diagonal ascends from the dog in the lower right corner to Gaspar and the Virgin. The Virgin's face sits at the mathematical center of the composition: the vanishing points of the perspective systems are to the right of her head, near the shepherd behind the donkey. Gossart changed his hat's original bright red to a dull greenish-brown, presumably to make it less obtrusive. the sense of recession emphasized by their relative positions in the squares on the floor. The strong diagonal recession between Balthasar and Melchor is highlighted by the fact that they both mirror and invert each other's poses, and the pinks and greens of their outfits form a kind of counterpoint. Another strong diagonal ascends from the dog in the lower right corner to Gaspar and the Virgin. The Virgin's face sits at the mathematical center of the composition: the vanishing points of the perspective systems are to the right of her head, near the shepherd behind the donkey. Gossart changed his hat's original bright red to a dull greenish-brown, presumably to make it less obtrusive. the sense of recession emphasized by their relative positions in the squares on the floor. The strong diagonal recession between Balthasar and Melchor is highlighted by the fact that they both mirror and invert each other's poses, and the pinks and greens of their outfits form a kind of counterpoint. Another strong diagonal ascends from the dog in the lower right corner to Gaspar and the Virgin. The Virgin's face sits at the mathematical center of the composition: the vanishing points of the perspective systems are to the right of her head, near the shepherd behind the donkey. Gossart changed his hat's original bright red to a dull greenish-brown, presumably to make it less obtrusive. and the pinks and greens of their outfits make a kind of counterpoint. Another strong diagonal ascends from the dog in the lower right corner to Gaspar and the Virgin. The Virgin's face sits at the mathematical center of the composition: the vanishing points of the perspective systems are to the right of her head, near the shepherd behind the donkey. Gossart changed his hat's original bright red to a dull greenish-brown, presumably to make it less obtrusive. and the pinks and greens of their outfits make a kind of counterpoint. Another strong diagonal ascends from the dog in the lower right corner to Gaspar and the Virgin. The Virgin's face sits at the mathematical center of the composition: the vanishing points of the perspective systems are to the right of her head, near the shepherd behind the donkey. Gossart changed his hat's original bright red to a dull greenish-brown, presumably to make it less obtrusive.
In 1600 this large painting was perhaps in St Adrian's Abbey at Geraardsbergen (Graamont) in East Flanders. Gossart seems to have painted it for the church between 1510 and 1515, probably for the funeral chapel of Daniel van Boechout, lord of Boelare near Geraardsbergen. At this time, the artist was in the service of Philip of Burgundy, Bishop of Utrecht, with whom von Boechout was closely related: he was a member of his council, governor of his main residence, and executor of his will. Gossart probably knew von Boechout well: he had stayed at Philip's estates on his way to Rome in 1508-159. The unusual splendor of the kings' robes here might even be related to their original location, as among the relics in the abbey's collection in 1519 was "a piece of clothing of one of the Magi".