The Adoration of the Magi

Some time after His birth, Jesus was visited by some wise men from the East.   While romantic images have the wise men arriving on the night of Jesus' birth, that is quite unlikely.  Jesus may actually have been up to two years old, and He and His parents were certainly not in a stable anymore but in some more permanent dwelling.   How many wise men there were, we do not know.  Tradition says there were three because Scripture says they brought three different types of gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  We certainly do not know their names.

The "wise men" were actually Magi (from which the word magician comes) and astrology was an important part of their knowledge.  They had seen a portent ("star") in the heavens which they correctly interpreted to mean that a supernatural King had been born to the Jews.  They came to Jerusalem, the capital city of the Jews, and were guided by scholars of Scripture to Bethlehem.  There they found Jesus and worshipped Him.

The following is a painting by Tom DuBois

What follows are two paintings by the great Dutch Baroque painter, Peter Paul Rubens.   The first is The Adoration of the Magi, and the second is The Adoration of the Kings.

Following is The Adoration of the Magi by Rembrandt, the great Dutch Baroque painter.

After the wise men had worshipped the Christ child, they left for their homes.   When they had earlier been in Jerusalem, King Herod, the then king of the Jews, had asked them to return to him after they found the child so that, he said, he could worship the child, too.  In fact, Herod meant the child no good, so an angel warned the wise men to avoid Herod and they returned home by a different way.  An angel also warned Joseph, Jesus' earthly father, to flee to Egypt.  There are many paintings of the flight to Egypt but the following one, by George Hitchcock, is my favorite.

Here is The Rest during the Flight from Egypt (I think it should be "to" Egypt) by Caravaggio, the great Italian Baroque painter.

Herod went into a rage when he realized what the wise men had done.  He was a vicious man who, history tells us, even murdered two of his own sons when he became jealous of their growing power.  Herod dispatched soldiers to the little (and insignificant) town of Bethlehem with orders to slaughter all male children two years old or less (based on what the wise men had told him about the time of the appearance of the star).  What follows are two paintings entitled The Massacre of the Innocents, the first by Rubens and the second by Reni, an Italian Baroque artist.

Jesus and His family spent some years in Egypt, until an angel told Joseph that Herod had died.  They returned to Judea, but then went north to Galilee and to Joseph and Mary's hometown of Nazareth.

The painting that follows is St. Joseph and the Christ Child by El Greco, the great Spanish Baroque painter.

If you want to continue the story of Jesus' life, click on the following painting of St. Joseph the Carpenter by de la Tour:

If you prefer to return to the beginning page, click on the alpha and omega.