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KONINKLIJK MUSEUM VOOR SCHONE KUNSTEN ANTWERPEN
Jrg. 2, 2008
aanbidding door de koningen1
BULLETIN
Rubens and his black kings
Elizabeth McGrath
When, during his stay in France in 1665, Gianlorenzo Bernini was taken to
see Poussin’s Adoration of the Magi in the house of financier Cotteblanche
(ill. 1), the great sculptor pronounced, in the words of his chronicler,
Fréart de Chantelou, that “he was astonished that Signor Poussin, who
was so knowledgeable in the matter of decorum, had given these kings the
expressions and attitudes of ordinary people as if they were apostles; that
one of them looked like a St Joseph, indeed that if he had not seen a moor
there, he would have wondered if this really was an Adoration.” Fréart
tells us he then remarked that a number of people considered the ‘kings’
were really learned men and great astrologers, and the painter Le Brun
pronounced that Poussin would have depicted them as he had heard tell,
having duly considered the matter.
Bernini responded, evidently with
some irritation, that what mattered
was keeping to the biblical text “which
says that they were kings”, something
which Le Brun promptly corrected,
observing that the Bible simply calls
them ‘magi’. The silence that ensued
was, perhaps fortunately, ended by
dinner.1
ill. 1 Nicolas Poussin, Adoration of the Magi,
oil on canvas. Dresden, Gemäldegalerie.
1) “Revenus à l’hôtel Mazarin, le signor Paul et M. Coffier l’ont appelé pour lui faire voir, dans une
maison vis-à-vis, des tableaux de Poussin. Il est entré et a vu une Adoration des trois rois (c’est celle
qu’avait le sieur Charmois)… le Cavalier a dit en le revoyant qu’il s’étonnait que le signor Poussin,
qui était si savant dans le costume, n’eût donné à ces rois que des airs de tête et des manières de
personnes ordinaires come à des apôtres; qu’il en avait un qui ressemblait à un saint Joseph: que s’il
n’avait vu là un More, il aurait douté que ce fût une adoration. J’ai dit qu’ils n’avaient passé, suivant
l’avis de plusiers, que pour des savants et grands astrologues. M. Le Brun a dit que M. Poussin n’avait
eu l’intention que de les représenter tels qu’il lui en avait entendu parler et de son opinion sur ce
sujet. Le Cavalier a dit qu’il fallait s’attacher à l’Ecriture, qui dit que c’étaient des rois. M. Le Brun
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Le Brun was right about the scriptural reference, even if he was
wrong to suppose it was relevant to the picture, since Poussin in fact
indicated the royal status of the visitors by including three crowns - simple
and unshowy, but still gold crowns - laid aside before the infant Christ.
At the same time Bernini’s comments, which equally ignore the crowns,
are perfectly understandable. Poussin’s painting, made in Rome in 1633, is
one of the most low-key pictures of the Adoration of the Magi produced in
the seventeenth century. In it the artist consciously rejected the devices of
worldly splendour that are so characteristic of representations of the subject
and are wonderfully exemplified in Rubens’s great altarpiece created almost
a decade earlier for St Michael’s Abbey and now in the Koninklijk Museum
(ill. 2). It is notable too that even the noise and bustle which usually seems
to surround an Adoration of the Magi, with the exotic invasion of the stable
at Bethlehem, is banished from Poussin’s picture, or at least kept far in the
background: witness the figure with finger
to lips, enjoining silence. But one thing
common to both pictures is the black king,
even if he is totally different in appearance
and character. Poussin’s lithe and youthful
black African, bending in profile, is very
plainly dressed; moreover, his short white
tunic, perhaps uniquely in an image of
the Magi, reveals a pair of long, bare legs.
Indeed, his attendant, carrying the crown
and pointing, seems to have been designed
to help the onlookers, within as well as
outside the painting, to understand that his
master really was a king. Rubens’s figure
by contrast is a stout oriental potentate,
more olive brown rather than truly dark in complexion, his impressive
costume derived from that of a real near-eastern model, a Turkish outfit
owned by the merchant Nicolaas de Respaigne2,
and his facial features based freely on a character
Rubens knew as a King of Tunis (ill. 3) - the
sixteenth-century Berber prince, and sometime
ally of Emperor Charles V, Mulay Ahmad.3
ill. 2 Peter Paul Rubens, Adoration of the Magi,
oil on panel. Antwerp, KMSKA.
a répliqué qu’elle disait des mages. Il n’a plus rien dit et s’en est venu dîner.” Fréart de Chantelou
(1885), p. 227. For Poussin’s painting (Dresden, Gemäldegalerie), see Blunt (1966), pp. 34-35, no. 44;
Thuillier (1994), p. 252, no. and fig. 93. It is signed in an usually elaborate way: ‘Accad. Rom. Nicolaus
Poussin faciebat Romae 1633’.
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That one of the Wise Men was African
or black is not stated in the biblical account of
the Adoration of the Magi, any more than that
they were kings - or indeed that they were three
in number. Matthew 2.1-12 is the scriptural
text, and it is also the gospel of the Feast of the
Epiphany, 6 January, one of the greatest feasts of
the Catholic Church; in this text we read simply
of magi (a term most naturally interpreted as
ill. 3 Peter Paul Rubens, after Jan
applying to members of the Persian priestly
Cornelisz Vermeyen, Mulay Ahmad,
class) who came from the east (ab oriente; apo oil on panel. Boston, Museum of Fine
Arts.
anatolõn in the Greek) led by a star. However,
Matthew goes on to say “and entering into the
house, they found the child with Mary his mother, and falling down they
adored him. And opening their treasures they presented unto him gifts:
gold, and frankincense and myrrh” (“Et intrantes domum, invenerunt
puerum cum Maria matre eius, et procidentes adoraverunt eum: et apertis
thesauris suis obtulerunt ei munera, aurum, thus, et myrrham”); it was the
triplicity of these gifts that encouraged the idea that the Wise Men were
2) See Van Mulders’s contribution to this Rubensbulletin, Rubens’ Antwerpse Aanbidding, p. 74.
Respaigne was painted wearing this costume by Rubens shortly after his return from the Levant in
1619. He called the portrait “syn turcks contrefeytsel gemaeckt van Rubbens”: Vlieghe (1972), pp. 14547, no. 129.
3) Rubens’s copy of a portrait of Mulay Ahmad by Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen (but attributed by him to
Antonis Mor) is now in Boston, Museum of Fine Arts. It was made in 1613-14, but was kept with him
throughout his life in his house. See notably Held (1940), pp. 177-179 and 176, fig. 2; K. L. Belkin in
Belkin and Healy (2004), pp. 137-39, no. 17.
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three in number (an idea which starts with Origen and was reinforced by
St Augustine).4 Moreover, a verse of Psalm 71 (72) was long associated with
the event and included in the Catholic liturgy of the Epiphany: “the kings
of Tharsis and of the islands shall offer presents, the kings of the Arabians
and of Saba shall bring gifts” (“reges Tharsis et insulae munera offerent
reges Arabiae et Saba tributum conferent”). This, seen in conjunction with
other Old Testament references to kings, helped to sanction the notion of
the Magi as royal.5 It also gave an impetus to the association of the Magi
with dark-skinned or black people, or, to use the biblical term, Ethiopians.
Not only is the verse from Psalm 71 immediately preceded by a reference
to Ethiopians bowing down;6 but Saba is Sheba, the Ethiopian kingdom of
the famous Queen whose visit to Solomon was, from early Christian times,
seen as a prefiguration of the Adoration of the Magi.7 Moreover, many of
the biblical references to Ethiopians were already taken by the Church
Fathers to allude to, and indeed symbolise, the Gentiles: the pagan peoples,
who, unlike the Jews, recognised and welcomed Christ. Crucial here was
a verse from Psalm 67 (68): “Ethiopia shall soon stretch out its hands to
God” (“Aethiopia praeveniet manus eius Deo”).8 The Magi collectively
epitomise pagan wisdom, combined with elevated status: they are rich and
mighty kings come from afar to humble themselves before the true king, the
prince of peace. But the feast of the Epiphany is above all the celebration
of Christ’s manifestation to and recognition by the Gentiles, the nations of
the world that were to prove themselves open to the Christian message,
and are represented by these men ‘from the east’.
In Rubens’s time the great Jesuit commentator Cornelius a Lapide
(Cornelis van der Steen) summed it up thus, citing the authority of SS.
Leo and Augustine: “Hence the Church celebrates with so great solemnity
the Feast of the Epiphany, in which the Magi were called to adore Christ,
because in them and by them was begun the calling and salvation of the
Gentiles. Wherefore S. Leo (in his second sermon on the Epiphany) says ‘Let us, brethren beloved, recognize in the Magi, who worshipped Christ,
the first-fruits of our vocation and faith, and with exulting minds let us
celebrate the beginnings of blessed hope. From this time forth we began to
enter into our eternal inheritance.’ And S. Augustine (in his second sermon
on the Epiphany) says - ‘This day, on which we keep the anniversary of
our festival, first shone upon the Magi. They were the first-fruits of the
Gentiles (primitiae Gentium), and we are the people of the Gentiles. To us
has the tongue of Apostles announced it; but to them, the star, as though
the tongue of heaven. And the same Apostles, as though they were other
heavens, have declared unto us the glory of God.”9
That the revelation to the Gentiles was seen as the primary meaning
of the subject of Rubens’s St Michael altarpiece (ill. 2) is clear enough
from the account given in 1629 by Abbot Van der Sterre of his church’s
splendid picture “exceedingly praised by great art lovers”: “which vividly
represents the sacred Theophany, or manifestation of God-made-man to
4) See Kehrer (1908), I, p. 13; also notably Kaplan (1985), p. 21. Augustine’s authority was crucial for
later theologians. Cornelius a Lapide observes: “Again, that they were three in number, from the three
species of gifts which they offered - gold, frankincense, and myrrh, - is taught by Augustine, in his
twenty-ninth and thirty-third sermon de Tempore and St Leo in his first, third, fifth and sixth sermons
on the Epiphany. The pious tradition of the faithful takes the same view. And the office of the Church
for the Epiphany implies it.” (“Rursum eos numero tres fuisse, secundum tria munerum genera, puta
aurum, thus, et myrrham, quae Christo obtulerunt, docent S. Augustinus serm. 29. et 33. de Tempore,
S. Leo serm.1.3.5.6. de Epiphania, idque habet pia fidelium traditio et innuit Ecclesia in officio Eccles.
Epiphaniae.” See Cornelius a Lapide (1864) p. 65. Cornelius’s text is available online in the English
translation of Thomas Mossman (London 1890) at: http://www.catholicapologetics.info/scripture/
newtestament/Lapide.htm. I have benefited from, but not exactly followed, this translation. Cornelius’s commentary on the New Testament was published only after his death in 1637, but it represents
a valuable guide to Catholic theology in the Southern Netherlands during Rubens’s lifetime. Cf.
Baronius (1597-1612), I, pp. 49-56, esp. p. 53. (Rubens bought the Annales of Baronius in 1622: Arents
(2001), p. 153, E 48).
5) The idea was first put forward explicitly by Tertullian. See Kehrer (1908), I, p. 13; Kaplan (1985), p.
21. Cf. Cornelius a Lapide (1864), p. 60, citing the opinions of modern authorities such as Baronius, as
well as earlier theologians. For Baronius on the Magi see previous note.
6) Psalm 67.9: “Coram illo procident Æthiopes, et inimici eius terram lingent.”
7) See Kaplan (1985), esp. pp. 22-24; Massing (2008), pp. 33-35.
8) For the association of Ethiopians with Gentiles see esp. J. M. Courtès in Bugner (1979), I, pp. 14-16.
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9) Cornelius a Lapide (1864), p. 65: “…unde Ecclesia tanta solemnitate celebrat festum Epiphaniae,
quo Magi vocati Christum adorarunt, quia in ipsis et per ispos coepit Gentium vocatio et salus.
Quocirco S. Leo serm. 2, de Epiphan.: Agnoscamus, ait, dilectissimi, in Magis adoratoribus Christi, vocationis nostrae fideique primitias, et exultantibus animis beata spei initia celebremus. Exinde enim
in aeternam haereditatem coepimus introire. Et S. Aug. serm. 30 de Tempore: Illis (Magis), inquit,
dies iste primus illuxit, anniversaria nobis festivitate rediit. Illi erant primitiae Gentium, nos populi
Gentium. Nobis hoc lingua nuntiavit Apostolorum, stella istis tamquam lingua coelorum, et nobis
iidem Apostoli tamquam alii coeli enarraverunt gloriam Dei.”
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the first-fruits of the Gentiles, the three sainted Magi, in a manner full of
majesty and veneration.”10
Van der Sterre evidently felt that the Wise Men had been depicted
appropriately as well as beautifully by Rubens. But as a trained theologian
he can hardly have been unaware of recent debate on the subject of the
representation of the Magi, in particular of the moorish king. In his treatise
on religious iconography and the errors of artists, first published in 1570
but reprinted in a revised edition at Antwerp in 1617, the Leuven cleric
Joannes Molanus had expressed his disapproval of the practice of showing
one of the Magi black, calling it an unauthorised innovation: “Then there
are some who paint one of the Magi as black or rather dark or dusky, such
as the whiter among the Mauritanians are. This seems to me a very recent
phenomenon. For in older pictures I have noticed that more often than
not all three are depicted as white. The reverend Father Van der Lindt at
Roermond and elsewhere has observed it frequently too. That is why, as in
his fine discussion of this depiction, he says: Further, the idea commonly
believed of the Magi that one of them was an Ethiopian, I would think
should be placed among traditions of a dubious sort.”11
It is therefore especially interesting that, in his consideration of
the matter, Cornelius a Lapide observes by contrast: “… it is probable that
one or another of the Magi was black, or Ethiopian, both because this
is commonly felt by everyone, and painters depict the Adoration of the
Magi this way, and because the Queen of Sheba is said to have come from
Ethiopia, and finally because Psalm 71 says: ‘Before him the Ethiopians
shall fall down.’”12
Here Cornelius consciously takes a stand against Molanus, who was,
as it happens, a predecessor at the University of Leuven. Cornelius found
the black Magus favoured by painters perfectly consistent with theology,
indeed a figure likely to enhance the spiritual meaning of the subject by
recalling the biblical associations of Ethiopians with Gentiles. It is possible
that he was thinking specifically of works by Rubens when he wrote these
words. Cornelius seems to have left Flanders for a career in Rome in 1616,
and so could not have seen the great altarpieces of the Magi that Rubens
painted between 1617 and 1634. But he would certainly have been familiar
with the illustration, showing an engaging young black Magus, that the
artist produced for the Missale Romanum printed by Balthasar Moretus
at the Plantin Press in 1613, and which was used again for the Breviarium
Romanum issued the following year.13 Cornelius was a much greater scholar
and theologian than Molanus. He certainly knew very well that, even if the
black king was a relatively recent arrival on the artistic scene, he had been
present in texts at least from the early middle ages, as well as being implicit
in the readings for the Epiphany. Quite probably too Cornelius had a better
and more generous appreciation than Molanus did both of the power of art
and of the role black figures might play in it.
10) See Herremans’s contribution to this Rubensbulletin, ‘Opus vere basilicum & stupendum’, p. 23,
Appendix 2, at p. 62: “quae… Sacram ipsam Theophaniam sive Dei-hominis factam Gentium primitiis,
tribus Sanctis Magis manifestationem maiestatis ac venerationis plenam ad vivum representat.”
11) “Deinde quidam pingunt unum Magorum nigrum, aut potius subnigrum, & fuscum, quales sunt
albiores Mauritani. Quod mihi valde recens videtur. Nam in picturis vetustioribus saepius omnes
tres candidos pingi observavi. Idemque non infrequenter Reverendissimus Lindanus Ruremundae,
& alibi, observavit. Unde pulchre de hac Pictura ait, Porro quod de Magis illis vulgo creditur, unum
fuisse Aethiopem, eodem, videlicet ad traditiones medii generis,… referendum putarim.” See Molanus
(1617), pp. 247-48; cf. Boesplug, Christin and Tassel (1996), II, pp. 343-47. Also Massing (2008), pp.
43-44.
12) Cornelius a Lapide (1864), p. 60: “Hinc rursum verisimile est unum vel alterum Magorum fuisse
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It is in a work attributed to the Venerable Bede that one of Magi is
first specifically described as being black, or rather ‘dusky’ (fuscus): “The
first is said to have been called Melchior, an old man, white-haired, with
flowing beard and locks…; he presented gold to the Lord the King. The
second was named Caspar, young, beardless, and ruddy…; he honoured God
with frankincense, as an offering worthy of God. The third was Balthasar,
dark-skinned, with a full beard …., and by means of myrrh he signified that
the Son of Man should die.”14
nigrum, sive Aethiopem, tum quia vulgo omnes ita sentiunt, itaque adorationem Magorum pingunt
pictores: tum quia ex Aethiopia dicitur venisse regina Saba, tum denique quia Psal. 71. dicitur: ‘Coram
illo procident Aethiopes…’”
13) See Judson and Van de Velde (1978), I, pp. 96-99, nos. 8-8a and pp. 132-33, no. 22; II, pls. 51-52
and 83. Rubens designed the title-page to Cornelius’s commentary on the Pentateuch which was
produced at the same press in 1616: ibid., I, pp. 173-78, no. 36; II, pls. 118-19.
14) Bede in Migne (1861-1904), XCIV, col. 41: “…primus fuisse dicitur Melchior, senex et canus,
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Here the dark king is associated with the symbolism of death,
myrrh being used in ancient times for the preparation of corpses. At the
same time, another work associated with Bede put forward the important
idea that the three wise men should be associated with the three known
continents, Europe, Asia and Africa15 - and this certainly reinforced
the notion that one of them was black. In later texts the myrrh-bearing
magus tends to darken further in colour, changing from fuscus to niger.16
Most importantly, in the fourteenth-century History of the Three Kings
(Historia trium regum) by John of Hildesheim we find him specified as
a ‘black Ethiopian’ (niger Aethiops). Interestingly, however, John’s black
king is a different character from Bede’s dusky one; he is now the youngest,
Caspar, and comes from India, not Africa.17 Here we see the effect of the
geographical vagueness that surrounded the concept of Ethiopia from the
time of Homer onwards and pervaded so much classical and medieval
literature. For Homer, Ethiopia was a double place at the rising and setting
sun - far east and far west - as well as in the African south; and even in
Renaissance texts ‘Ethiopian’ can mean Indian as well as African. It was
this ambivalence that was seized upon by Cornelius a Lapide in his biblical
commentary, for by this means he could manage to reconcile the scriptural
refererence to the Magi coming from the East with the idea that one of
them was black and ‘Ethiopian’.18
John of Hildesheim’s account had been particularly inspired by
the presence in nearby Cologne of the relics of the three Kings - at least the
greater portion of their earthly remains, for Hildesheim itself had managed
somehow to acquire three of their fingers (one from each?). And the cult
at Cologne is connected to the inauguration, around 1400, of the black
king in representations of the Adoration. True, there are a few isolated
claimants from elsewhere to the title of first black Magus in art.19 There
are also intriguing fourteenth-century illustrations of the ‘coats of arms’ of
the Magi, which give a heraldic moor or moor’s head to Balthasar.20 But it
was in Germany from the early fifteenth century that the motif of the black
Magus really began to take hold, spreading from there to other European
countries. In his Renaissance manifestations the black King may often
look like an African, especially when he is based on a real model, but as an
Ethiopian (and according to John of Hildesheim from the remote Indies)
he almost always has associations of eastern exoticism and luxury. And
if fifteenth-century German (and then Netherlandish) representations
usually made him the youngest of the three, this was by no means always
the case. Nor was his name and title ever definitely fixed, as we can see from
those works of art that bear inscriptions: depending on the text or tradition
followed, he can be Balthasar, ‘King of Sheba and Godolia’ (as on an early
sixteenth-century French sculpture in Arras), or Caspar, ‘King of Tharsis’
(as on a print by Jacques Bellange) or indeed Melchior, ‘King of the East’ (as
on a painting from the workshop of Hans Pleydenwurff ).21 But this Magian
confusion could be turned to advantage by painters and sculptors. It meant
that there was a wide range of possible types and characters to draw on in
imagining the black king. Rubens was, as an artist, unusually interested
in the imagery of dark-skinned and black figures; he was also unusually
familiar with theological commentary, and must have been well aware of
barba prolixa et capillis…; aurum obtulit regi Domino. Secundum, nomine Caspar, juvenis imberbis,
rubicundus…; thure quasi Deo oblatione digna, Deum honorabat. Tertius, fuscus, integre barbatus,
Balthasar nomine… per mirrham filium hominis moriturum professus est.” Cf. Kaplan (1985), p. 26 ; J.
Devisse in Bugner ed. (1979), I, pp. 135-36.
15) Bede in Migne (1861-1904), XCII, col. 13. This idea was taken up influentially by Rupert of Deutz:
Kaplan (1985), pp. 33-34. Augustine already suggested that they came from the four corners of the
world.
16) See Kaplan (1985), esp. pp. 26-34.
17) Kaplan (1985), esp. pp. 62-68; J. Devisse in Bugner, ed. (1979), II, pp. 28-30 and 138-39.
18) Cornelius a Lapide (1864), p. 60. Cf. above, n. 12. St Thomas was said to have baptised the three
Magi in India: Baronius (1597-1612), I, pp. 323-24.
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19) See notably Kaplan, pp. 85-101, dismissing most of these as dubious.
20) See esp. J. Devisse in Bugner ed. (1979), II, pp. 48-55.
21) The French sculpture, a single figure 62 cm. high, in alabaster, but with distinctive African features, is in Musée des Beaux-Arts, Arras, inv. 907.30: it came from the former Cathedral. An image can
be accessed through: http://moteur.musenor.com/application/moteur_recherche/ConsultationOeuvre.aspx?idOeuvre=382449. Its inscription is: “Balthazar rex golodie et sabba thus obtulit.” This designation (Golodia is a slip for Godolia) comes from John of Hildesheim, but, confusingly, he thought
of Caspar as the black king. The exact location of John’s Godolia (in India) seems to be a mystery.
For the Bellange etching see Walch (1971), pp. 196-97, no. 26. The companion Melchior is called “Rex
Nubiae” and Balthasar “Rex Sabae”. For the Pleydenwurff workshop picture showing “Melchiar Rex
de Orient[e] S[anctus]” see Massing (2008), p. 358, n. 11, citing A. Stange, Kritisches Verzeichnis der
deutschen Tafelbilder vor Dürer, III, Munich 1978, p. 109, no. 249.
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the discrepancies and confusions in the accounts of the Magi. Presumably
he discussed them too with his close friend, Balthasar Moretus, for whom
he made the illustrations to the Missale Romanum, since Balthasar had
actually been named after the ‘moorish king’ (rex morus) by his father Jan,
who had taken the black Magus and his star, with the motto ‘ratione duce’
(‘guided by reason’), as the device of the Moretus family.22 At any rate it is
clear that Rubens profited from his knowledge of the different traditions,
exploiting to the full the potential variety of the black king.23
It has been argued convincingly that Rubens’s Norbertine patron for
the great Antwerp altarpiece (ill. 2), Matheus Irsselius, had an important
role in the formulation of the subject-matter.24 At the same time, at least
from his first encounter with Italian art, Rubens himself had been strongly
attracted to the topic of the Magi as a pictorial challenge, and any patron
who knew something about his work (as Irsselius surely did) would have
borne this in mind when deciding to ask him to paint an Adoration, rather
than some other religious theme. It was, after all, with an Adoration of the
Magi rich in blacks and blackness that, on his return from Italy in 1609,
Rubens had sought to impress the secular authorities of Antwerp with his
talent.25 The great series of Adorations of the Kings that Rubens made in
the course of his life, constantly revising his compositional, figural and
colouristic ideas, testify to the enduring nature of his fascination with the
subject. It is significant too that his Adorations were among the subjects he
thought of having engraved, when he conceived of the idea of publicising
his work through prints from the late 1610s.26 But of all the protagonists
of these works, it was the black Magus who most underwent pictorial
reinvention. He ranges from a joyful curly-haired youth of the missal
published by the Plantin Press in 161327 to the fearsome potentate of the St
Michael altar (ill. 2). He wears headdresses of all sorts, from simple diadem
to the most elaborate Moorish or Turkish turban. His features change as
much as his colouring, from sub-Saharan to North African, deep black to
tawny brown. So too does his age, and his role. He sometimes carries the
foremost gift of gold rather than the casket of myrrh. As always, Rubens’s
creative impulses were fuelled by his awareness of artistic traditions and
pictorial precedents, but in the case of the black Magus the study of real
African individuals particularly affected these influences.
There is no surviving head study that corresponds to the young
man whose features were used for the figure
of the Missale Romanum and subsequently
perhaps for the handsome acolyte on the left
in the altarpiece painted c. 1620-21 for the
Capuchin Church in Tournai (ill. 4), and now
in the Royal Museum in Brussels.28 But we
have two splendid oil sketches from life, one
made from a Moorish dignitary in Italy and
the other from a man of more modest station
who evidently sat for Rubens in his studio in
Antwerp. The first study (ill. 5), executed on
paper that had already been used for notes
in Italian, served directly for the Adoration
for the Town Hall of 1609.29 The second head
22) The association of Morus/Moretus was crucial here. For other examples of the use of a ‘moor’ to
allude to a family name, or a nickname see McGrath (2002). On Jan Moretus’s invention of his device,
see Voet (1969-72), I, p. 201. Jan named two other sons after Caspar and Melchior.
23) For Rubens’s versions of The Adoration of the Magi see esp. Devisscher (1992); also Massing 2008,
pp. 43-48 and the contributions to this journal, above all Van Mulders. For Rubens’s engagement with
black figures in other contexts see, for example, E. McGrath in Kolfin and Schreuder (2008), pp. 5069 and J. Vander Auwera, ibid, p. 185 under no. 16.
24) See Herremans’s contribution to this Rubensbulletin, ‘Opus vere basilicum & stupendum’, p. 6.
25) For this work, its history, and related sketches see now Vergara et al.(2004), with earlier bibliography. The work as it now appears in the Prado, Madrid, was altered - lightened in colour and
changed in other respects - by Rubens himself when he visited Spain in the late 1620s. As a result
some black figures disappeared along with the dark background.
96
ill. 4 Peter Paul Rubens, Adoration of the Magi,
oil on canvas. Brussels, Royal Museum.
26) See Huvenne in Van Hout (2004), pp. 10-16.
27) Cf. above, at n. 13.
28) For this picture see most recently N. Peeters, H. Dubois and J. Vander Auwera in Vander Auwera
et al. (2007), pp. 175-77, no. 51.
29) See, most recently, Ongpin (2005), no. 7; J. Vander Auwera in Kolfin and Schreuder (2008), p. 185,
no. 16. This study is painted in oils on prepared paper, which was something Rubens avoided once he
was back from Italy and had wooden panels readily available for the purpose of making oil studies of
heads. The inscriptions in Italian are not in Rubens’s hand and involve a list of accounts. Nonethe-
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study (ill. 6), or rather set of studies of different poses
and moods - from cheerful to pensive - was employed
much more extensively, for black men in many secular
as well as religious contexts.30 In fact this African man
(undergoing successive colour changes to suit the
compositional requirements, from reddish-brown to
black) was one of Rubens’s favourites. In his ‘happy’
mode he appears, translucently black, in the splendid
Adoration of the Magi in Mechelin (Church of St John),
in which the figures around the infant Christ are
illuminated by the miraculous light pouring out into
the darkness.31 In the Adoration for Tournai (ill. 4),
however, the broadly smiling face is attached not to
ill. 5 Peter Paul Rubens, Study
of a Moorish man, oil on paper.
the king’s attendant but to the Ethiopian king himself,
London, Private Collection
suitably turbaned (Rubens generally prefers this
mark of royalty to a
crown for his black king); and his smile
is still more clearly a joyful recognition
and acknowledgement of the divinity of
Christ, for he joins his hands in prayer.
This is despite Christ’s babyish stroking of
the head of the oldest Magus, an episode
watched intently by the black attendant
ill. 6 Peter Paul Rubens, Four Studies of the head of a
black man, oil on canvas. Brussels, Royal Museum.
less, it has been argued that the study was made in Antwerp in preparation for the 1609 Adoration, an
intermediary between the compositional sketch (Groningen, Groninger Museum) and the finished
painting, since the man looks more like the figure in that painting. But this resemblance is not as crucial as it might appear. Rubens could have made the compositional sketch without having the head
study beside him; he had left Rome in great haste and without preparation on hearing of the illness of
his mother; and the head study may have arrived in Antwerp with his baggage only months later. At
any rate it seems to me much more likely that the study records an African in his own headdress seen
in Italy, rather than a figure posed and dressed up in the artist’s studio in Antwerp; indeed the fact
that Rubens resorted to an old piece of paper that came to hand suggests an opportunity snatched,
rather than a planned sitting.
30) Held (1982), pp. 149–55; Held (1980), I, pp. 607–609, no. 441; II, pl. 428; N. Peeters and H. Dubois
in Vander Auwera et al. (2007), pp. 178-79, no. 52.
31) For this tripych, made between 1616 and 1619, see esp. Baudouin (1977), pp. 102-04.
98
on the left, carrying a thurible. Even when he started out with an altogether
different concept of the black king, as in the case of great painting made in
1634 for the convent of the Dames Blanches [Witte Nonnen] of Leuven, now
the altarpiece in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge (ill. 7),32 the familiar
face from the Brussels study would tend to assert itself. The sketch for
the Leuven altarpiece (London, Wallace Collection)33 shows an animated
black face which in the end was modified by reference to the much-used
sketch, in this case exploiting the more serious expression. Here he is
blacker than ever before. Last in line - coming from the farthest regions
- he has a solemn and slightly melancholic air that aptly accompanies his
gift of myrrh.
Like the Leuven picture (ill. 7), the altarpiece for St Michael’s Abbey
(ill. 2) was a marvel of painterly technique, executed with amazing speed
and conviction. In this case the combined
inspiration of the Turkish costume and
the portrait of Mulay Ahmed produced a
black king who is not only lighter in tone,
in accordance with the overall bright
colouring, but quite different in personality
from any other such figure by Rubens. His
somewhat formidable stance and character
was not readily suited to an adaptation of the
man in the Brussels sketch (ill. 6), whether
in jovial, solemn or slightly anxious mode.
But the experience of painting real Africans
from life had its effect on the convincing
liveliness of the dusky Magus, eyeing with
apprehensive amazement the little child
before him.
ill. 7 Peter Paul Rubens, Adoration of the Magi,
oil on panel. Cambridge, King’s College.
32) Held (1980), I, pp. 457-58; Massing (2008), pp. 47-48.
33) Held (1980), I, pp. 457-58, no. 521; II, pl. 325.
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