The Adoration of the Magi (1480s): Art, History and Details

The Adoration of the Magi (1480s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Geertgen tot Sint Jans (Netherlandish, c. 1460-c. 1490).

The work and its context

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

Little is known about the life and career of Sint Jans. He seems to have been born in Haarlem in Holland in the northern Low Countries where he may have been attached to the Knights of Saint John as a lay brother, and likely produced an altarpiece for that order. (His name seems to derive from his affiliation with the Knights of Saint John.) He died young in his late 20s. Between 12 and 16 paintings are attributed to him. The subjects tend to derive from the New Testament. The original context of this painting is not known.

Object facts

• Title: The Adoration of the Magi
• Date: 1480s
• Creator attribution: Geertgen tot Sint Jans (Netherlandish, c. 1460-c. 1490)
• Culture: Netherlands, Haarlem, 15th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on wood
• Dimensions: Framed: 39 x 29.5 x 3.5 cm (15 3/8 x 11 5/8 x 1 3/8 in.); Unframed: 29.3 x 18.9 cm (11 9/16 x 7 7/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Medieval Art
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1951.353

Collection credit

Gift of the Hanna Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Francis, Henry. "Two Dutch Fifteenth-Century Panels."The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 39, no. 1 (January 1952): 3-6.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

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.