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| Franco-Flemish Master Adoration of the Magi, with St Anthony Abbot ca. 1410-20 tempera and oil on panel Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
St Joseph, seated directly above – and behind the Virgin and Child – wears no halo. The painting's themes and composition are, this early in the 15th century in the north of Europe, more influenced by medieval tradition than Renaissance innovation. The room itself is marooned between a flat tableau and a space rendered in depth – the floor appears to slope downward like a raked stage with the two standing Magi at right appearing to float slightly above it. St Anthony Abbot, at far left, is placed to usurp the attention to which St Joseph, as foster father of Christ, would seem entitled. But Joseph's stock did not stand high in the middle ages. He was most commonly portrayed as quite old, both white-haired and inert, perhaps to crush any suggestion that he was truly the Virgin's spouse, that he would or could ever make any claims on her sacred, inviolate body. Anthony, on the other hand, was one of the most prominent "healing" saints – the tiny pig begging for his attention represents the diseased sufferers he had the power to cure. Contemporary viewers had good reason, then, for preferring Anthony to Joseph.
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| Antonio Vivarini Adoration of the Magi ca. 1445-47 tempera on panel Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Francesco Botticini Adoration of the Magi in a Landscape ca. 1480 tempera on panel Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia |
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| Bartholome Zeitblom Adoration of the Magi ca. 1490 oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Master of the Aachen Altarpiece Adoration of the Magi ca. 1500-1510 oil on panel Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Raphael Adoration of the Magi ca. 1502-1504 tempera on panel, transferred to canvas (predella fragment from Coronation of the Virgin altarpiece) Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome |
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| Albrecht Dürer Adoration of the Magi 1504 oil on panel Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence |
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| Master of Frankfurt Adoration of the Magi ca. 1510 oil on panels (triptych) Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart |
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| Anonymous Netherlandish Artist Adoration of the Magi ca. 1510 oil on panel Rhode Island School of Design, Providence |
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| Jan van Scorel Adoration of the Magi ca. 1519 oil on panel Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Girolamo da Carpi Adoration of the Magi ca. 1525-28 oil on canvas Gallerie Estense, Modena |
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| Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli Adoration of the Magi 1547 oil on panel Galleria Nazionale di Parma |
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| Pieter Isaacsz Adoration of the Magi ca. 1600 oil on copper Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon |
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| Leonaert Bramer Adoration of the Magi ca. 1630-35 oil on panel Detroit Institute of Arts |
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| Federico Bencovich Adoration of the Magi 1725 oil on canvas Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart |
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| Johann Friedrich Overbeck Adoration of the Magi ca. 1811-13 oil on panel Hamburger Kunsthalle |
from Magi
If only you'd been a better mother.
How could I have been a better mother?
I would have needed a better self,
and that is a gift I never received.
and that is a gift I never received.
So you're saying it's someone else's fault?
The gift of having had a better mother myself,
my own mother having had a better mother herself.
The gift that keeps on not being given.
my own mother having had a better mother herself.
The gift that keeps on not being given.
Who was supposed to give it?
How am I supposed to know?
Well, how am I supposed to live?
I suppose you must live as if you had been
given better to live with. Comb your hair, for instance.
I cut off my hair, to sell for the money
to buy you what you wanted.
I wanted nothing but your happiness.
I can't give you that!
What would Jesus do?
He had a weird mother too . . .
What would Jesus do?
He had a weird mother too . . .
Use the myrrh, the frankincense, as if
it were given unconditionally, your birthright.
– Brenda Shaughnessy (2012)