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The Adoration of the Magi

late 15th-early 16th century

Rodrigo de Osona the Elder, Workshop of Rodrigo de Osona the Elder

Curator Isabella Lores-Chavez and radio journalist Hana Baba on “The Adoration of the Magi”
Gallery 3

Isabella Lores-Chavez: We have here a scene of the adoration of the Magi or the three Wise Men, who have come to worship the newly born Christ child.
Narrator: Curator Isabella Lores-Chavez. The Wise Men wear lavish robes and gold accessories, and bring gifts for the newborn Christ, sitting on his mother Mary’s lap.
Isabella Lores-Chavez: One of the things that I love so much about this painting is that //we also see another figure on the right who is kneeling with his hands in prayer.
Narrator: That’s the wealthy Spanish patron who paid artist Rodrigo de Osona to make the painting. This was around the turn of the 1500s - when Spain was aggressively seeking to conquer territories and nations overseas.
Isabella Lores-Chavez: That ship in the background is really a reference to how this territorial expansion takes place through voyages that are being funded by the Spanish monarchs to the Americas.
Narrator: The Wise Man to the left, Balthazar, is shown as an African king.
Isabella Lores-Chavez: With this kind of territorial expansion and access to other parts of the world came the movement of people. Suddenly we have the presence of more and more Africans in Europe. That said, there had already been an African presence in Europe in the Middle Ages, partly through the kind of interconnected trade with other continents, particularly Asia and Africa.
Depicting Balthazar as an African king is both this signal to the viewer that the kings have traveled from afar. But it's also a kind of argument for how these indigenous populations and conquered people - in the eyes of these Catholic monarchs - were supposedly amenable to being converted to Christianity.

Medieval Christian texts described the Magi as three wise men or kings who traveled from afar to worship the newborn Jesus. In medieval European art, they were usually portrayed as white men, but by the early Renaissance, that convention changed. Rodrigo de Osona and his workshop depicted one of the Magi, Balthazar, as an African king. People from sub-Saharan Africa were already present throughout medieval Europe due to trade and diplomacy. In the fifteenth century, European enslavement of African people increased rapidly, all while the Catholic Church instrumentalized the image of Balthazar as an African king to advance its global evangelizing ambitions.

Curator Isabella Lores-Chavez and radio journalist Hana Baba on “The Adoration of the Magi”
Gallery 3

Isabella Lores-Chavez: We have here a scene of the adoration of the Magi or the three Wise Men, who have come to worship the newly born Christ child.
Narrator: Curator Isabella Lores-Chavez. The Wise Men wear lavish robes and gold accessories, and bring gifts for the newborn Christ, sitting on his mother Mary’s lap.
Isabella Lores-Chavez: One of the things that I love so much about this painting is that //we also see another figure on the right who is kneeling with his hands in prayer.
Narrator: That’s the wealthy Spanish patron who paid artist Rodrigo de Osona to make the painting. This was around the turn of the 1500s - when Spain was aggressively seeking to conquer territories and nations overseas.
Isabella Lores-Chavez: That ship in the background is really a reference to how this territorial expansion takes place through voyages that are being funded by the Spanish monarchs to the Americas.
Narrator: The Wise Man to the left, Balthazar, is shown as an African king.
Isabella Lores-Chavez: With this kind of territorial expansion and access to other parts of the world came the movement of people. Suddenly we have the presence of more and more Africans in Europe. That said, there had already been an African presence in Europe in the Middle Ages, partly through the kind of interconnected trade with other continents, particularly Asia and Africa.
Depicting Balthazar as an African king is both this signal to the viewer that the kings have traveled from afar. But it's also a kind of argument for how these indigenous populations and conquered people - in the eyes of these Catholic monarchs - were supposedly amenable to being converted to Christianity.

Artists: Rodrigo de Osona the Elder (Spanish, ca. 1440-1518), Workshop of Rodrigo de Osona the Elder (Spanish, circa 1440 - 1510)
Title: The Adoration of the Magi
Date: late 15th-early 16th century
Place of Creation: Spain
Object Type: Painting
Medium: Oil on wood panel
Dimensions: 75 1/4 x 47 3/4 in. (191.1 x 121.3 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of The Samuel H. Kress Foundation
Accession Number: 61.44.23

La Cuadra y Oliag, Valencia, before 1913 [1]

Lionel Harris (1862-1943), London, by 1913 [2]

[Sir Joseph Duveen, London and New York, by 1935] [3]

Sold to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York, June 28, 1949

Gift to the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, December 10, 1961

Administrative transfer to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1972

[1] Post 1938, pg. 891.
[2] Mayer 1913, pgs. 117-118, fig. 65. Harris was also an art dealer and owned a gallery in London.
[3] Sweet 1935, no. 15. Lent by Sir Joseph Duveen.
Mayer, August L., Geschichte der spanischen Malerei, vol. 1, Leipzig: Klinkhardt and Biermann, 1913, pgs. 117-118, fig. 65.

Hadeln, Detlev, Archiv für Kunstgeschichte, vol. 2, Leipzig: E.A. Seemann, 1914, no. 28.

Loga, Valerian von, Die Malerei in Spanien vom XIV. bis XVIII. Jahrhundert, Berlin: G. Grote'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1923, pgs. 45-46.

Mayer, August L., Historia de la pintura española, Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1928, pgs. 120-121.

Saralegui, Leandro de, “Miscelánea de Tablas Valencianas,” Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones 40 (1932), pgs. 50, 300.

Tormo y Monzó, Elías, “Rodrigo de Osona, padre e hijo, y su escuela,” Archivo español de arte y arqueología IX, no. 27 (1933), pg. 164.

Saralegui, Leandro de, “Tres Tablas Valencianas,” Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones 43 (1935), pg. 159.

Post, Chandler Rathfon, A History of Spanish Painting, Volume VI-Part I: The Valencian School in the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935, pgs. 216-218, fig. 81.

Post, Chandler Rathfon, A History of Spanish Painting, Volume VI-Part II: The Valencian School in the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935, pg. 652.

Post, Chandler Rathfon, A History of Spanish Painting, Volume VII-Part II: The Catalan School in the Late Middle Ages, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938, pg. 891.

Sweet, Frederick A., Exhibition of Spanish Painting, Department of Renaissance Art, Brooklyn Museum, exh. cat., Brooklyn N.Y.: Brooklyn Museum Press, 1935, no. 15, repr.

Gudiol, José, Spanish Painting, exh. cat., Toledo: Toledo Museum of Art, 1941, pg. 50-51, no. 31.

Cook, Walter W. S., “Exhibition Reviews: The Exhibition of Spanish Painting at the Toledo Museum of Art,” The Art Bulletin 23 (September 1941), pg. 223.

Post, Chandler Rathron, “Additional Works by the Osonas,” Gazette des beaux-arts (November 1943), pg. 276.

Sánchez Cantón, F. J., Nacimiento e infancia de Cristo, vol. 1, Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1948, pgs. 130-131, repr. pg. 183.

Angulo Íñiguez, Diego, Ars Hispaniae: Historia universal del arte hispánico, pintura del Renacimiento, vol. 12, Madrid: Plus-Ultra, 1954, pgs. 24-25, fig. 4.

Suida, Wilhelm, The Samuel H. Kress Collection, San Francisco: M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, 1955, pgs. 68-69, repr.

Frankfurter, Alfred, “The Kress Gift to San Francisco,” Art News 54, no. 2 (April 1955): pg. 58.

Neumeyer, Alfred, “The Samuel H. Kress Collection of the M.H. de Young Museum in San Francisco,” The Art Quarterly 18, no. 3 (Autumn 1955): pg. 278.

Gaya Nuño, Juan Antonio, La Pintura Española Fuera de España (Historia y Catálogo), Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1958, pg. 261, no. 2082.

Eisler, Colin, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian, Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1977, pgs. 184-185, 503, fig. 186, K1664.

Young, Eric, “Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection,” The Connoisseur 195, no. 784 (June 1977), pgs. 152-153.

Lee, Thomas P., “Spanish Pictures for San Francisco,” Apollo: the Magazine of the Arts 111, no. 217 (March 1980), pgs. 199-200, fig. 4.

Ximo Company, La pintura dels Osona: una cruïlla d'hispanismes, flamenquismes i italianismes, 2 vols., Lleida: Pagès Editors, 1991, vol. 1, pgs. 147-150; vol. 2, figs. 62-64.

Ruiz i Quesada, Francesc, ed., La pintura gòtica hispanoflamenca: Bartolomé Bermejo i la seva època, exh. cat., Barcelona: Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya; Bilbao: Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2003, pg. 246; repr. pg. 248, pg. 541.

Muller, Priscilla E., Jewels in Spain: 1500-1800, New York, N.Y: Hispanic Society of America, 2012, pg. 28, fig. 36.

Ximo Company, “Valencia and Late Gothic Painting,” in Late Gothic Painting in the Crown of Aragon and the Hispanic Kingdoms, eds. Alberto Velasco and Francesc Fité, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018, pgs. 259-260, fig. 5.24.

Figueras, Joan Molina, ed., Bartolomé Bermejo, exh. cat., Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado; Barcelona: Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, 2018, pg. 194.

de Young

Legion of Honor

de Young

Legion of Honor

The Adoration of the Magi

Curator Isabella Lores-Chavez and radio journalist Hana Baba on “The Adoration of the Magi”
Gallery 3

Curator Isabella Lores-Chavez and radio journalist Hana Baba on “The Adoration of the Magi”
Gallery 3

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de Young

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de Young

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Social Sharing

Curator Isabella Lores-Chavez and radio journalist Hana Baba on “The Adoration of the Magi” Gallery 3

Transcript

Curator Isabella Lores-Chavez and radio journalist Hana Baba on “The Adoration of the Magi” Gallery 3

Transcript

Provenance

Exhibition History

Bibliography

Lux Aeterna, 1914

The Road Near the Farm, 1871

The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist, 1626

Ecology of violence II, 2023

New York Evening Sun, early 1890s

Of Water and the Spirit 8, 2024

3 Sisters, 2022

Self-Portrait, 2007

Telemachus and Mentor Escape from the Island of Calypso, 1729-1745

Curator Isabella Lores-Chavez and radio journalist Hana Baba on “The Adoration of the Magi”
Gallery 3

Curator Isabella Lores-Chavez and radio journalist Hana Baba on “The Adoration of the Magi”
Gallery 3