The Adoration of the Magi

1646

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 153 cm × width 188.8 cm
depth 8.5 cm

Inscriptions

signature and date, lower left (J and V ligated): J. v. Schooten. fe. 1646

Technical notes

The relatively coarse, plain-weave canvas support is made up of two horizontal strips of fabric. The slightly raised seam is visible about one third of the way from the top edge, just above the head of the standing king, Caspar. Cusping is present on all sides, and the support has been lined. The ground has a beige colour. The paint layers were applied thickly, with much visible brushmarking. A pentimento in the right background overlapping the arch and next to the two pages reveals the figure of a man. This figure was much larger than the two pages next to him indicating that the original conception for this part of the composition was very different. Another, extremely vague, pentimento in the middle of the painting overlaps the round temple in the background. It is uncertain what was originally painted here.

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 12 October 2004

Condition

Fair. The paint layers are quite abraded and have become semi-transparent in places, for example the white shirtsleeve of Melchior, the oldest king. This sleeve was apparently painted over the red cloak, which has now become visible. There are discoloured retouchings along the seam, in the sky and, to a lesser degree, in the figures’ faces. The varnish is also very discoloured and matte.

Conservation

W.A. Hopman, 1890: canvas lined

Provenance

…; from Mr Van der Kolff van Hoogeveen, Delft, fl. 298.64, with a large chest and A forest floor, with a snake, lizards, butterflies and other insects by Otto Marseus van Schrieck (SK-A-975), to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague (inv. no. 5820), 1882; transferred to the museum, February 1885

Object number: SK-A-974

The artist

Joris Fransz van Schooten (Leiden 1587 - Leiden 1652)

The Leiden town chronicler Jan Jansz Orlers informs us, and a later document confirms this, that Joris van Schooten was born in Leiden in 1587. His father, a Flemish immigrant, was a baker, and his older brother, Frans van Schooten, was professor of mathematics and engineering at the university, as well as an amateur printmaker. Also according to Orlers, Joris van Schooten studied with the portraitist Evert Crijnsz van der Maes in The Hague for a period of three years beginning in 1604. In 1610, Van Schooten was one of a group of artists who drafted a request to establish a Guild of St Luke in Leiden. It was only in 1648 that this guild was established, and Van Schooten was one of its first members. In 1617, he married Marijtgen Bouwensdr van Leeuwen in the Reformed Church in Leiden and settled in nearby Oegstgeest, where he would live until his death in 1652. It is known that he was financially well-off from loans that he made to the Lutheran church in Leiden in the 1640s, among other sources.

Van Schooten was active as a portraitist and history painter. His earliest extant painting is a 1622 Portrait of a Woman.¹ In 1626, he received the prestigious commission to execute a series of six group portraits of the officers of Leiden’s various civic guard companies. Two years later, he painted the civic guard group of a newly appointed captain, and, in 1650, he once again received a commission to portray six captains of the town guard.² While Van Schooten’s portraits show the influence of Jan Anthonisz van Ravesteyn, who on occasion also portrayed Leiden citizens, he largely followed Pieter Lastman’s example in his history paintings. A number of these were also painted on commission, the earliest being his 1624 Tabula Cebetis, executed for the Leiden Latin School.³ In 1639-40, he painted four of the nine paintings for the west gallery of the Lutheran church in Leiden, and, in 1643, a Siege of Leiden for the town hall.⁴ According to Orlers, Jan Lievens (1607-74) came to study with Van Schooten at the age of eight and learned the basic principles of painting from him over a two-year period. Van Schooten probably also trained his son Arent (?-1662), who followed in his father’s footsteps, and to whom he bequeathed the contents of his studio in his will of 1651.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

References
Orlers 1641, p. 372; Houbraken I, 1718, pp. 130-31; Gerson in Thieme/Becker XXX, 1936, p. 258; Ekkart in Leiden 1976, pp. 36-39; Byvanck-Quarles van Ufford/Happee 1980, pp. 51-53

Entry

Of the handful of history paintings Van Schooten is known to have painted, this Adoration of the Magi is the latest in date. Executed in 1646, the painting is remarkably old-fashioned. The figure types, especially that of the youngest king, Caspar, who stands to the right of centre, and the rather robust figure of Mary, recall the work of Pieter Lastman, who had already been dead for more than a decade when Van Schooten finished this work. The Roman architecture and bright colouring also point to Lastman’s influence. Van Schooten’s picture, however, cannot be said to be based directly on a known work by Lastman, as the Amsterdam artist does not seem to have treated the subject of the Adoration of the Magi. It may have been by way of the younger Leiden history painters, Rembrandt and Jan Lievens (the latter being Van Schooten’s pupil) that Van Schooten came into contact with Lastman’s art. One aspect of the present painting, the repoussoir figure of Balthasar cast in heavy shadow, was probably derived from Rembrandt and Lievens’s example, rather than that of Lastman. Examples of such repoussoir figures can be found in Rembrandt’s early painted oeuvre, executed in Leiden, including the 1625 Stoning of St Stephen and David with the Head of Goliath before Saul from two years later.⁵ Lievens apparently used such repoussoirs only in his drawings, such as that of Mucius Scaevola and Porsenna from around 1626.⁶ Van Schooten had already used this compositional device in 1639-40 for two of the works he executed for the Lutheran church in Leiden.

A charming aspect of Van Schooten’s Adoration is the partially concealed faces that peer out at the viewer, including that of the page behind the figure of Caspar and the Christ Child. That the latter is shown frontally, directly engaging the viewer, rather than in profile, is only one of the unusual features of Van Schooten’s painting. Another is the prominent role given to Joseph, who is shown presenting the child to the oldest king, Melchior, while the Virgin holds the gift of gold coins. Joseph is usually given a much more subordinate role in depictions of the Adoration of the Magi, sometimes appearing only as a minuscule figure in the background. Significantly, in Van Schooten’s Adoration of the Shepherds, painted for the Lutheran church some six years earlier, it is also Joseph and not Mary who presents the Christ Child.⁷

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 272.

Collection catalogues

1887, p. 155, no. 1313; 1903, p. 243, no. 2167; 1934, p. 260, no. 2167; 1976, p. 507, no. A 974; 2007, no. 272

Citation

J. Bikker, 2007, 'Joris van Schooten, The Adoration of the Magi, 1646', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026300

(accessed 19 December 2025 09:49:50).