Adoration of the Magi (c. 1590): Art, History and Details

Adoration of the Magi (c. 1590) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Maarten de Vos (Flemish, 1532–1603).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The drawing is a print design made to be translated to a copperplate in the city of Antwerp in the late 16th century. De Vos’s closely cropped composition brings the three magi as well as Joseph into close contact with the seated Virgin and Child. The elaborate vessels carried by the magi, including a footed nautilus cup, a silver dish, and what could be a coconut cup, are the types of exotic treasures that would have been collected by Antwerp’s wealthy inhabitants signifying their contact with foreign lands. The magi furthest back is portrayed as African, a not uncommon but by no means universal interpretation of the magi’s origins.

Object facts

• Title: Adoration of the Magi
• Date: c. 1590
• Creator attribution: Maarten de Vos (Flemish, 1532–1603)
• Culture: South Netherlands, 16th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash; traces of transfer
• Dimensions: Sheet: 20.3 x 15.9 cm (8 x 6 1/4 in.)
• Collection: DR - Dutch
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2019.232

A detail from the museum

In this depiction of the adoration of the magi, the magi furthest back is portrayed as African, a not uncommon but by no means universal 16th-century interpretation of the magi’s origins.

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. Richard W. Whitehill Art Purchase Endowment Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Peters, Emily J., Laura Ritter, William Griswold, Klaus Albrecht Schröder, and Koenraad Jonckheere. Tales of the City: Drawing in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel. Cleveland, OH : Cleveland Museum of Art, 2022.
• Lovelace, Carrie. “A Tradition of Endowment: History, common questions, and details.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine vol. 62, no. 4 (December 2022): 28-29.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.