Peter Paul Rubens painted the Adoration of the Magi (Matthew 2:1ff) more often than any other episode from the life of Christ.Hans Devisscher, Peter Paul Rubens: Aanbidding der Koningen (1992) noted ten versions of the theme and Michael Jaffé, Rubens: Catalogo completo (Milan, 1989) fifteen. The subject offered the Counter-Reformation artist the chance to depict the richest worldly panoply, rich textiles, exotic turbans and other incidents, with a range of human types caught up in a dramatic action that expressed the humbling of the world before the Church, embodied in Madonna and child. The most notable include:
Adoration of the Magi (Rubens, Madrid), 1609, reworked 1628–29 Adoration of the Magi (Rubens, Lyon), c.1617–18 Adoration of the Magi (Rubens, Antwerp), 1624 Adoration of the Magi (Rubens, Cambridge), c.1634
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