Adoration of the Magi

Pieter Coecke van Aelst's Adoration of the Magi brings his architectural sensibility to this most pageant-demanding of devotional subjects. Coecke's documented interest in Vitruvian architecture and his design work for the triumphal entries of Charles V gave him particular skill in creating elaborate stage-like settings for major narrative subjects. His Adoration deploys the Renaissance architectural background he had developed from Italian models as a setting for the Magi's procession, the classical architecture lending the biblical scene an anachronistic grandeur that asserted the continuity between ancient wisdom and Christian revelation.

The painting demonstrates the technical conventions and artistic vocabulary of the period, with attention to composition, color, and the rendering of form appropriate to the subject.