The Adoration of the Magi

The Virgin Mary sits before a rocky grotto, presenting the Christ child to a kneeling elderly king who has laid his crown on the ground. A dense crowd of attendants, pages holding treasure chests, and soldiers on camels process toward the holy family from a mountainous landscape. Above the scene, a radiant, multi-pointed star with a central core shines intensely, casting beams of light directly onto the manger.

The engraving emphasizes the 'mystica' nature of the Magi's gifts, which in Renaissance Neoplatonism were interpreted as symbols of the three-fold nature of Christ and the alignment of the macrocosm with the microcosm. As 'magoi' or wise astrologers, the Magi represented the 'Prisca Theologia'—the ancient wisdom tradition that supposedly anticipated Christian revelation through the study of the stars.