FORMAL ESSAY: THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI

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Oddly enough, the subject of The Adoration of the Magi, painted by Pieter Bruegel the younger in the early 1600’s, is warmth. What may make this surprising is that the first element your eyes may notice as you read the painting is the snow, white and quietly ominous on the rooftops and behind the crowd of peasants moving through the square. Furthermore, by the presence of the snow, you may be quick to recognize the harsh winter at work upon the town. People hunch against the nippy air, wrapped in blankets, hats, and coats, and the village fights the world for its very survival by continuing to perform the necessities of life, even when life is difficult. Yet, although the winter is a strong focus in Bruegel’s scene, warmth is the painting’s main subject. As Dante Alighiere asserts in “Critical Theory Since Plato”: “writings can be understood and ought to be expounded chiefly in four senses… literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogic(al).” In such an array of senses paintings can also be understood if observed critically, and by digging this way into The Adoration of the Magi I see many meanings that can be categorized under the word warmth. From the warmth of the painting's colors to comments on the warmth of simple religious worship, warmth in the face of winter is keenly examined in this wood panel landscape.

As with many things, the opposite natures of warmth and winter make their individual qualities more apparent in the company of the other. In The Adoration of the Magi, Bruegel uses this technique of contrast to set a stage for his study of warmth in a village of the 15th century. To begin with, the colors stand out. Whites and blues interspersed with the warm hues of red brick and the dark browns of trees and of the villagers' clothing play on the eye through contrast to make the viewer feel both of the extreme undercurrents of the scene almost without studying the contents of the painting. With a closer look, warmth in contrast with and due in part to the snow can be felt in the community of villagers struggling together through their frigid environment, which Dante might consider the "literal" sense of the painting. Behind the crumbling stone wall to the left center of the scene, people huddle around a fire to keep warm, and in the streets they walk in twos and threes leading horses or hurrying from place to place in busy earnest. So much collective action is felt in the toil of the people carrying loads, fetching water from the river, or bustling through the square that the warmth of winter is exposed as both a necessity to combat hardship and a gift that brings the people together. The only person truly alone in the scene is the child sledding on the ice-covered river; in the child’s careless play, though, the warmth of community is obvious, for without it he would be less likely to find enjoyment in the cold. In contrast with human warmth, two vacant birds sitting in a tree above the spectacle of the village demonstrate the possession of camaraderie and liveliness in the face of hardship as predominantly human traits, especially in the presence of the most important point about warmth made by the painting: the Church, or “the bread not fit for beasts” as Gregory Dowling has expounded (“Wonders of Venice” walking tour).

Bruegel strives to make a more thorough investigation into the warmth of the village by including a statement about the religious aspect of life. Two obvious references to the Church appear in this painting. First, in a wasting, old barn, or manger, Christ’s nativity is partially hidden behind a crumbling wall in the bottom left-hand corner of the painting. Not surprisingly, aside from the surprise of finding the nativity in this European village, winter falls second to the adoration of the Christ child by the peasants, who only by the title of the painting or a careful eye are identifiable as the magi. To me, this nativity is not literally a nativity but a sort of metaphor for this village’s place of worship or even of the type of worship the villagers practice, in which they can worship in a very personal way, almost as directly as the magi did. The second reference is the haunting ruins of a cathedral on the right-hand side of the scene that visually connect to the nativity by way of the diagonal crowd across the square. These ruins are Gothic and are representative of an abandoned or faltering psychology. Erwin Panofsky, in “Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art,” says that “the Gothic statue, however emancipated, is expected to consist of the same material as its surroundings and never gives the impression of being detachable (a quality which) was pleasing to antiquity and the Renaissance.” The Gothic ruins and the nativity in this painting demonstrate this abandonment of the flat, simplified world of Gothic worship, in which the church reined, to the Renaissance world, in which the church is portrayed as humble. These two markers of the church not only touch on the importance of the church to the survival of the village community, but they also allegorically, as Dante might say, signify the changes of Christianity present in the 15th century.

Bruegel’s use of a vanishing point through the village buildings also comments on Renaissance realism verses Gothic flatness as well as on warmth. In Dante's "anagogical" sense, meaning that this emphasis exists but is hardly noticeable, the prospective depth in the painting creates a warm feeling of plenty that seems only to belong with the warmth of the nativity, where the Holy family seems strangely warm with only a shack to protect them from the cold. Warmth is further created in the depth of the illusion of the crowd’s movement away from the cold ruins of the Gothic cathedral towards the warm nativity scene. The people seem to be drawn towards the nativity, towards the non-Gothic interpretation of worship, even though they are really going about their business, headed in many different directions. This may fulfill Dante's "moral" sense, in a way, for it indirectly shows the observer the "way to go." With this last statement The Adoration of the Magi completes its discussion of warmth in a village plagued by winter, and Bruegel successfully paints winter as a defining backdrop for the presence of warmth in a devout community.