A triptych: the central panel: The Adoration of the Magi; the left wing: The Nativity; the right wing: The Rest on the Flight to Egypt

The Adoration of the Magi was the single most popular subject for triptychs produced in Antwerp in the period 1505-1530. Dan Ewing has convincingly argued that the Three Magi - travelers bearing dazzling gifts from distant lands - held a deep resonance for the prosperous merchant traders of Antwerp, the mainstay of its economic ascendancy and perhaps the most important group of art patrons in the city (see D. Ewing, `Magi and Merchants: The Force Behind the Antwerp Mannerists' Adoration Pictures', Jaarboek Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerpen, 2004-05, pp. 274-99). The composition of the present triptych's central panel conforms to one that Ewing has suggested is based on a lost prototype by Jan de Beer (see D. Ewing, Jan de Beer. Gothic Renewal in Reinaissance Antwerp, Turnhout, 2016). Max J. Friedländer regarded the present type as being by the hand of the Master of the von Groote Adoration, an anonymous artist whom he named for an altarpiece formerly in the von Groote collection, Kitzburg (see M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, XI, Leiden, 1974, p. 70, no. 27, pls. 36-7), although subsequent scholars have questioned whether they all derive from the same workshop. De Beer's Adoration of the Magi composition enjoyed tremendous popularity in the early 16th century and numerous copies were produced by diverse artists, often to be sold on Antwerp's open market known as the Pand. Ewing catalogued 55 copies/variations of de Beer's lost triptych in his 2016 catalogue, and several more have surfaced since then. The present work, which was previously unknown to Ewing, may be placed within a group of Adoration triptychs with daylight Nativities as their left wing (night Nativities were the norm), It appears to be unique, however, as its right wing is a Rest on the Flight to Egypt rather than the otherwise standard Flight to Egypt (D. Ewing, ibid., nos. 10.23-10.30).
We are grateful to Dan Ewing for his assistance in cataloguing this lot on the basis of a photograph.