(Antwerp circa 1545 – circa 1589)
The Adoration of the Magi,
oil on panel, 65 x 89.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection of Josef Cremer (1845–1938), Dortmund;
his sale, Wertheim, Berlin, 29 May 1929, lot 22;
Private collection, Germany;
sale, Lempertz, Cologne, 11 May 2013, lot 1019;
where bought by the present owner

Literature:
M. J. Friedländer, Die altniederländische Malerei, vol. XIII, Anthonis Mor und seine Zeitgenossen, Leiden 1936, p. 165, no. 271a (as after Willem Key);
M. J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. XIII, Antonis Mor and His Contemporaries, Leiden 1975, p. 95, no. 271a, pl. 133;
K. Jonckheere, Adriaen Thomasz. Key, Portrait of a Calvinist Painter, Turnhout 2007, pp. 129, 314, no. A 114;
K. Jonckheere, Willem Key 1516-1568, Portrait of a Humanist Painter, Turnhout 2011, p. 159, under no. A.81;
K. Jonckheere, Antwerp Art after Iconoclasm, Experiment in Decorum 1566–1585, New Haven 2013, p. 265, fig. 337

The present composition is a close-up rendering by Adriaen Thomasz. Key of an earlier picture of the same subject by his master Willem Key. The earlier painting was executed by Willem with the possible assistance of Adriaen. Konrad Jonckheere in his monograph on Willem Key writes that the present picture shows Adriaen surpassing his master Willem in ‘the execution of the skin tones and rendering of the fine fabric.’ Archival evidence suggests Adriaen Thomasz. may have only been distantly related to Willem Key, but took over Willem’s last name as a trademark.

Adriaen became a Master of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1568 in the wake of the destruction wrought by the iconoclastic fury of 1566. Commissions abounded for the replacement of altarpieces along with dictats on how the new religious works should look which were issued by Johannes Molanus, a Catholic theologian at the nearby university of Leuven. Adriaen notably painted a work for the high altar of the Franciscan church, along with many portraits, including a now historically important portrayal of William the Silent, Prince of Orange.

On the right of the current picture Adriaen has removed the figure of the black magus that anchored Willem’s earlier composition, instead replacing him with the camels and turbaned handlers of the magis’ caravan. The hills of Bethlehem are visible in the background. This lends the younger artist’s picture a greater sense of proportion and perspective while the more powerful modelling of the five figures around Mary gives the composition a greater sense of balance. Although there was a Flemish pictorial tradition of depicting the magus Caspar as black, as can be seen in Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s treatments of this subject, such a magus is not described in the gospels. Adriaen’s work is thus in keeping with Molanus’s 1570 recommendation of strict adherence to the text of the Bible in depicting religious scenes.

Conversely, the addition in the top left of a young man, nude, with highly individualised facial features is thought by Jonckheere to be a virtuoso self-depiction by Adriaen. The physiognomy of faces and hands of the other figures in the foreground exhibit Adriaen’s interest, as an accomplished portraitist, in anatomical study. In the words of Jonckheere ‘Adriaen succeeded much more than his master to transform his observations of nature into a detailed image.’ The tendon on the neck of the magus leaning in on the right and the veins on the back of the hands of the magus on the left further exemplify this. Finally, the expressions of the magi, Joseph and Mary are rendered powerfully, without verging on caricature.

Adriaen’s Holy Family, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (inv. no. 430) shows similar figures and the same attention to the treatment of their physiognomies that is apparent in the present work.