Pieter Coecke van Aelst Aalst 1502 - 1550 Brussels

Pieter Coecke van Aelst produced many triptychs of the Adoration of the Magi, which broadly follow the same compositional scheme.  By far the closest to the present work is the version in the Vitoria Museum, Alava, Barcelona (see G. Marlier, Pierre Coeck d'Alost, Brussels 1966, p. 157, reproduced figure 92). Numerous small changes exist however between the two versions, most notably to the pose of Saint Joseph in the right wing, who engages the viewer in the present version but looks towards the Christ Child in the Vitoria painting; in the arrangement of the architectural setting (in the Vitoria version the Virgin and child sit under a baldacchino); and in the inclusion of a flag-bearer in the background of the left wing in the Vitoria version, absent in the present work.