An uncompleted work fitting for our not-quite-over Christmas. That’s Epiphany, isn’t it? The unfinished story. We like to bring the wisemen in early so we can have some beautiful symmetry in the stable, but really this bit comes much later. And, like so many other Biblical stories, it’s a traveller’s tale.
Wise men from the East came to Jerusalem … and then…and then…and later they returned to their home by another route.
It’s a story that captures our imaginations. Travellers come from so far away, following a star and the hope in their hearts. We love to picture what that might have looked like.
I found this seventeenth-century engraving by Hendrik Goltzius on the Rijksmuseum website. It’s a remarkable site, with very good resolution and an excellent zoom function so you can get in amazingly close. It feels generous of the gallery to share their work in this way. The images you find in their collection online are not advertising for the brick-and-mortar galley. Instead, they are presented as another way that we might spend time with these works of art. You don’t have to visit Amsterdam to get a good, close look. It’s a very equal-opportunity perspective on art appreciation.
What I love about the Goltzius image is that everyone looks like they are actually looking at a baby. A longed-for, surprising baby. Sometimes, artists depict the Magi as aloof or overly-reverential. Or far too heavily decorated. These visitors from the East are heaped up with a large dose of Orientalism – another excuse for glitz and glitter in this season of lights. I guess Eastern gold shops up well against Northern snows.
But in Goltzius’ image, the magi are travellers. There’s a weariness and a scruffiness about them. And an intimacy, too, like that which grows on the road. Fingers clutch the arm that holds the candle. The central figure looks to see his companions’ reactions. He finds, as we do, faces open and full of feeling as these travellers see the longed-for future King in the infant before them. Emotion so rich that it catches in your throat. Delight. Joy. Love caught in the corner of an eye.
There is some debate about their identity, actually. Some scholars suggest that the two figures on the right might be shepherds, not magi, and that the central figure in Joseph. It’s hard to know. I think that their weariness mightt work either way. In this sparse image, we aren’t given clues to their social class or function. We see more of Mary’s clothing than those of any of the other figures, and even that is fairly vague.
But I’m not sure it matters. Whether they came from afar or in from the fields, we know why they are there. They are there to look.
Yet, looking, we can’t see the child. There are only a few faint lines and an open space.
For me, the incompleteness is part of the profound power of this image. The expressions on the men’s faces show us the presence of what we long to see. We see that they see. And that makes us look all the more deeply.
Among the careful lines of an old engraving.
In the familiar lines of an old story.
In the work and the worship of our churches.
In all the spaces and longings in our lives, all the shadows and rough and holy places where Christ is born among us. As the New Year approaches, may we all search diligently for the child and when we find Him, may we, too, find joy and peace.
