Here Rubens lavished his ermine and crimson draperies, his vases, and ewers, and censers of flaming gold;—­here poured over his canvas the wealth “of Ormuz and of Ind.”  Of fifteen pictures of this subject, which he painted at different times, the finest undoubtedly is that in the Madrid Gallery.  Another, also very fine, is in the collection of the Marquis of Westminster.  In both these, the Virgin, contrary to all former precedent, is not seated, but standing, as she holds up her Child for worship.  Afterwards we find the same position of the Virgin in pictures by Vandyck, Poussin, and other painters of the seventeenth century.  It is quite an innovation on the old religious arrangement; but in the utter absence of all religious feeling, the mere arrangement of the figures, except in an artistic point of view, is of little consequence.

As a scene of oriental pomp, heightened by mysterious shadows and flashing lights, I know nothing equal to the Rembrandt in the Queen’s Gallery; the procession of attendants seen emerging from the background through the transparent gloom is quite awful; but in this miraculous picture, the lovely Virgin Mother is metamorphosed into a coarse Dutch vrow, and the divine Child looks like a changeling imp.

In chapels dedicated to the Nativity or the Epiphany, we frequently find the journey of the Wise Men painted round the walls.  They are seen mounted on horseback, or on camels, with a long train of attendants, here ascending a mountain, there crossing a river; here winding through a defile, there emerging from a forest; while the miraculous star shines above, pointing out the way.  Sometimes we have the approach of the Wise Men on one side of the chapel, and their return to their own country on the other.  On their homeward journey they are, in some few instances, embarking in a ship:  this occurs in a fresco by Lorenzo Costa, and in a bas-relief in the cathedral of Amiens.  The allusion is to a curious legend mentioned by Arnobius the Younger, in his commentary on the Psalms (fifth century).  He says, in reference to the 48th Psalm, that when Herod found that the three Kings had escaped from him “in ships of Tarsus,” in his wrath he burned all the vessels in the port.

There is a beautiful fresco of the journey of the Magi in the Riccardi Chapel at Florence, painted by Benozzo Gozzoli for the old Cosmo de’ Medici.

“The Baptism of the Magi by St. Thomas,” is one of the compartments of the Life of the Virgin, painted by Taddeo Gaddi, in the Baroncelli Chapel at Florence, and this is the only instance I can refer to.

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