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aanbidding door de koningenJrg. 2, 2008

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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

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

ill. 1 Nicolas Poussin, Adoration of the Magi, oil on canvas. Dresden, Gemäldegalerie.

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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

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 applying to members of the Persian priestly class) who came from the east (ab oriente; apo 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. 145-47, 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.

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,

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’.

ill. 2 Peter Paul Rubens, Adoration of the Magi, oil on panel. Antwerp, KMSKA.

ill. 3 Peter Paul Rubens, after Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen, Mulay Ahmad,

oil on panel. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts.

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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

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, vo-cationis 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.”

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

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. Corne-lius’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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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.

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,

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

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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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

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 fea-tures, 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/ConsultationOeu-vre.aspx?idOeuvre=382449. Its inscription is: “Balthazar rex golodie et sabba thus obtulit.” This des-ignation (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.

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

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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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

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-

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

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. 50-69 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 bib-liography. 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.

ill. 4 Peter Paul Rubens, Adoration of the Magi, oil on canvas. Brussels, Royal Museum.

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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 the king’s attendant but to the Ethiopian king himself, 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

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 cru-cial 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.

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.

32) Held (1980), I, pp. 457-58; Massing (2008), pp. 47-48.33) Held (1980), I, pp. 457-58, no. 521; II, pl. 325.

ill. 5 Peter Paul Rubens, Study of a Moorish man, oil on paper.

London, Private Collection

ill. 6 Peter Paul Rubens, Four Studies of the head of a black man, oil on canvas. Brussels, Royal Museum.

ill. 7 Peter Paul Rubens, Adoration of the Magi, oil on panel. Cambridge, King’s College.

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