The Adoration of the Magi

By the late 1400s, Black African people were increasingly visible in Europe. Some arrived as church delegates or as part of diplomatic retinues; many more were brought as a result of the European slave trade in Africa, which intensified during this time. They began to appear in European art as well, particularly in images of the three Magi paying homage to the Christ Child.

Written sources described the Magi as bearing gifts from the known continents of the time—Africa, Asia, and Europe. By the end of the fifteenth century, one of the Magi (Caspar or Balthazar) more regularly began to be depicted with the skin color and generalized facial features of a Black African man, underscoring the European dream of Christian sovereignty around the world. Here, the Black Magus is last in line, his head aligned with the camels in the procession on the hill in the background, emphasizing what contemporaneous viewers would have perceived as their shared “exoticism.”