"The Adoration of the Kings"

What little description exists of the Nativity, briefly detailed in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, has been crystalized by artists into a tradition in which the infant Jesus, lying in a humble manger, is attended by the Virgin; three wise men, or magi, bearing gifts; and animals such as oxen and sheep. Renaissance treatments tended to dress the wise men, astrologers of the Persian court, in fashionable court clothes of the time. Jan Gossaert’s minutely detailed Adoration of the Kings (1510–15) is no exception. But while many works stick to the traditional rustic setting, Gossaert here sets the scene among classical ruins—thick flagstones crumbling beneath the figures’ feet—to literally symbolize the crumbling of the pagan order and the birth of a new spiritual leadership.