Adoration of the mages

Maurice Denis's 'Adoration of the Mages' (1904) is a religious subject by the painter who was the leading theorist of the Nabis and who combined his commitment to the Post-Impressionist formal revolution with a deep engagement with Catholic religious painting. His treatment of the Epiphany subject was part of his sustained project of renewing Christian art through the formal means of Post-Impressionism — the flattened, patterned, decorative approach of the Nabis applied to the traditional devotional subject to create an art that was both formally modern and spiritually engaged.

Denis renders the Adoration with his characteristic Nabi vocabulary — the figures of the Magi and the Holy Family simplified and flattened within a decorative composition that drew on both Renaissance altarpiece conventions and Post-Impressionist formal innovations. His palette is typically warm and harmonious, the religious subject treated with the same decorative sensitivity he brought to his secular subjects. His handling of the compositional space between the figures creates the reverential atmosphere appropriate to the devotional subject.