Title

Adoration of the Magi

Master of the Legend of Saint Catherine (Active in Brussels in the last quarter of the 15th century)

Generic classification

Object

Date

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Cultural context / style

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Material

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Iconography / Theme

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Current location

Object history

This scene is one of the five that made up the triptych of the Adoration of the Magi that presided over the south altar of the lay brothers' choir of the church of the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores, in Burgos. This triptych must have been dismantled before the current Baroque altarpieces of this space were made in 1659. When Antonio Ponz visited the Carthusian monastery in the 18th century, he pointed out that, in the altarpiece on the south side, only three old paintings were preserved "en muy mal estado" (in very bad condition). Indeed, by then the central panel had been replaced by a 17th century copy, previous to the Baroque altarpiece (the original panel, deteriorated, was placed in a cell and, from 1781, in the prior's cell), and it is quite possible that, of the four scenes on the side panels, one was by then on the back of the attic, facing the monks' choir, so it may have gone unnoticed by Ponz. Thus, his account of only three ancient paintings would be correct. The scholar from Castellón also provided a piece of information of the utmost relevance about the original pictorial ensemble: "su costo ascendió a veinte y seis mil ochocientos y diez maravedís" (its cost amounted to twenty-six thousand eight hundred and ten maravedís". This data is related to another extracted from the old documentation of the monastery that says the following: “1495: Se trajo de Flandes el quadro de la adoración de los Reyes, y se colocó en el Altar del coro de los Conversos. Costó 26.800 y 10 mrs.” (1495: The painting of the adoration of the Kings was brought from Flanders, and it was placed in the Altar of the choir of the Converts. It cost 26,800 and 10 mrs.). With this information, Didier Martens, in a work published in 2001, was able to brilliantly identify the ensemble, whose track had been lost after the War of Independence, with a triptych by the anonymous Brussels artist conventionally called Master of the Legend of Saint Catherine, which, in the absence of a scene, had been reconstructed by Christiane Deroubaix in 1978-79 (the remaining scene was identified by Constanza Negrín Delgado in 1995).

The triptych of the Adoration of the Magi from the lay brothers' choir of the church of the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores is, therefore, an imported Early Netherlandish work, probably commissioned ex professo by Queen Isabella the Catholic, which arrived in Burgos in 1495 and was installed in the lay brothers' choir of the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores. Although the historical sources place it on the altar on the south side of this space, Martens thinks, based on the study of the light of this triptych and its pendant, the triptych of the Baptism of Christ by Juan de Flandes (for which the triptych we are now dealing with served as a model), that the triptych of the Adoration of the Magi was initially on the altar on the north side.

Of its five compositions (one large one in the central panel, which is the one that confers the triptych its name, and two superimposed on each of the two side panels), four are preserved in museums and institutions in Italy (Annunciation and Presentation of Christ in the Temple), Belgium (Nativity of Christ) and Switzerland (Adoration of the Magi) and only one (Flight into Egypt) is preserved in a private Spanish collection in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Although the ensemble is not mentioned among the works of the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores plundered by General Darmagnac in 1810, in the context of the War of Independence, the fact that at least three of them are documented in France in the 19th century, probably from early dates, invites us to think that this general was responsible for their departure from Spain.

In any case, with respect to the Adoration of the Magi there is no news prior to its appearance on the art market in the Netherlands by the middle of the 20th century. In 1951 it was sold by the firm Mak van Waay, Amsterdam, and, according to the entry of the work in RKD Research, it would also have passed through the hands of the firm Frederik Muller & Co (the other firm of reference in the Amsterdam art market). Its buyer was a Swiss collector, probably Carl Nathan-Rupp, who, in later years, is recorded as its owner. Carl Nathan-Rupp, a German banker based in Basel who had acquired Swiss nationality, is best remembered as a watch collector (on his death in 1980, his watch collection was donated to the Historisches Museum Basel). We do not know if it was by his will that the panel of the Adoration of the Magi from the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores ended up in the Heiligkreuzkirche of Binningen (canton of Basel-Country), a Catholic church in this town in the Basel conurbation: there it can be seen to the left of the access to the high chapel.

Dispersed since the 19th century, in 2009 all the fragments of the ensemble were temporarily reunited in an exhibition at M Leuven, the Leuven museum.

Description

The scene of the Adoration of the Magi presided over the triptych, constituting its central panel, as evidenced by its dimensions and the debt of this triptych to the famous triptych of the Adoration of the Magi by Rogier van der Weyden from the church of St. Kolumba in Cologne, preserved in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.

If, in general, all the scenes of the triptych painted by the Master of the Legend of Saint Catherine for the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores in Burgos show a deep debt to Rogier van der Weyden, in the case of the title scene we could even speak of a copy of its counterpart painted for the church of St. Kolumba in Cologne. In fact, the differences with the model are minimal and are, above all, the result of the narrower format of the Burgos panel. The only significant differences are the absence of the donor represented at the far left in the Cologne panel, the absence of the large building represented at the far right in the Cologne panel and, perhaps most importantly, the absence of the Crucifix that Rogier Van der Weyden placed, in a central position, in the ruined architecture that shelters the Holy Family and its illustrious visitors, a reference to the future passion of Christ. The landscape seen through this architecture also differs, as in the model it is of a mixed rural and urban character while in the copy it is more clearly urban.

In any case, according to Didier Martens, the forty years that elapsed between the creation of the Cologne triptych and the creation of the Burgos triptych are manifested in the physiognomies of the characters, in which the Belgian scholar proposes to recognize a series of crypto-portraits relevant in the geostrategic context of the late 15th century, especially from the point of view of the marriage policy of the Catholic Monarchs that took shape in the embassy of Francisco de Rojas in 1493, which negotiated the marriage of the Prince of Asturias Juan and the Infanta Juana with the Archduchess Maria and the Archduke Philip, the children of the King of the Romans who was destined to become Emperor Maximilian I. Thus, the kneeling king would be Emperor Frederick III (d. 1493), father of Maximilian I, who would represent the Austrian and imperial ancestry; the next would be the Duke of Burgundy Charles the Bold (d. 1477), father-in-law of Maximilian I, who would represent the Burgundian ancestry; the next would be Maximilian I himself, called to become the father-in-law of the children of the Catholic Monarchs, and, finally, the page who offers him a cup would be the Archduke of Austria and Duke of Burgundy Philip, son of Maximilian I, who would become the husband of the Infanta Juana (and, finally, King of Castile: Philip I the Fair).

Locations

• 1495 - 1810

  monastery

  Miraflores Charterhouse, Burgos (Spain)

• 1810 - Mid XIX^th c.

  plunder

  Jean Barthélemy Darmagnac, Burdeos (France)

• Unknown date

  auction house

  Frederik Muller & Co., Ámsterdam (Netherlands)

• 1950 - 1951

  auction house

  Mak van Waay, Ámsterdam (Netherlands)

• 1951 - 1980

  private collection

  Nathan-Rupp Collection, Basilea (Switzerland) *

• 1990 - present

  church

  Church of the Holy Cross (Heiligkreuzkirche), Binningen (Switzerland)