Adoration of the Magi

Above the main scene floats a monumental star — radiant, “searchlight-like”, literally directed by Mehoffer as the luminous axis of the whole composition. Beside it hovers an angel bearing a phylactery (an inscription scroll) with the angelic hymn known from the Gospel of Luke 2:14:

GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO “Glory to God in the highest.”

The inclusion of the shepherds’ hymn (Lk 2:14) in the scene of the Adoration of the Magi (Mt 2:1–12) is an iconographically bold gesture — traditionally this hymn is associated with the scene of the Adoration of the Shepherds, not the Magi. In Mehoffer, the two epiphanic strands — the Nativity (the shepherds) and the Epiphany of the Lord (the Magi) — are fused into a single, supra-episodic theology of revelation. The angel no longer repeats the word addressed to the shepherds, but proclaims the timeless truth of the whole Epiphany.

The middle zone contains the canonical scene of the Adoration: Mary with the Child emerging from the stable, Joseph beside her, the three Magi (one kneeling with a gift, two standing, one of them young and beardless in the canonical type of Balthasar). Mehoffer handles this scene in an idiom that, seen close to, appears almost folk-like (crib-like, intimate, full of gesture and movement), while from a distant vantage it becomes cosmic (lit from above by the star, unified compositionally with the angel and the sky). This is a deliberate dualism — Mehoffer wants the revelation to be not a remote allegorical scene, but at once concrete and metaphysical in dimension.

The most original and iconographically unprecedented part of the window is the base zone, in which Mehoffer introduces a counterpoint scene: Herod accompanied by Death and the Devil, with the bodies of the murdered innocents lying at his feet (Mt 2:16–18; the Massacre of the Innocents). The personifications of Death (a skeleton clinging to Herod’s arm and biting it) and of Satan with a green serpent (beside him a horned, blue demon) bring into the window the tradition of the late-Gothic iconography of the Triumphus Mortis (the Dances of Death, Bruegel’s “Triumph of Death”, the fresco in Pisa). The combination of the Adoration scene with the Massacre of the Innocents in a single window is extremely rare in ecclesiastical iconography — Mehoffer makes a gesture of programmatic significance, to which we return in the iconological analysis.

The most stylistically characteristic aspect of the window is the fragmented mosaic of colour — the way Mehoffer breaks up every larger coloured surface (Mary’s robe, the eldest King’s mantle, the crowns, the gifts) into hundreds of tiny, autonomous fields of glass. Seen close to, the composition becomes almost abstract; from a distance it recovers its figural quality. This device — anticipating the solutions of pointillism and of Cubism in stained glass — is one of Mehoffer’s most original techniques in the Fribourg cycle, worked out with particular intensity in “The Adoration of the Magi”.

The canon of the three Magi, with names assigned in the medieval tradition (from the 6th–7th centuries, the so-called Gospel of James): Caspar (the youngest, beardless, black in the tradition from the 15th century), Melchior (the eldest, bearded), Balthasar (the middle one). Each offers a canonical gift: gold (a symbol of Christ’s kingship), frankincense (divinity — an attribute of priestly ministry), myrrh (a foreshadowing of the Passion — used for embalming the dead). Mehoffer distinguishes the Magi by colour: the eldest in a yellow (golden) mantle — Melchior; the kneeling one with a gift in middling dress; the youngest, standing on the right — Caspar (or vice versa, depending on the detailed attribution; without name inscriptions the identification calls for caution).

The Star of Bethlehem (Mt 2:2: vidimus enim stellam eius in oriente — “for we have seen his star in the east”), shown monumentally above the scene, is in Mehoffer not merely a narrative attribute but the luminous axis of the composition. The angel beside it, bearing a phylactery with the Lucan hymn, is a full-scale figure: wings spread, arm raised in gesture, gaze directed towards Mary and the Child. The theological interweaving of the two strands — the Adoration and the shepherds’ hymn — makes the upper zone of the window a composite, supra-episodic allegory of the Epiphany.

The base zone unfolds as three personified figures: Herod the Great (King of Judea, d. 4 BC; he ordered the massacre of the innocents according to Mt 2:16) in royal dress with a crown, in a pose at once mournful and hostile; Death (Mors) in the form of a skeleton clinging to Herod’s arm and biting it; Satan (Diabolus) in the form of a grey-haired old man with a large green serpent, beside him a blue horned demon. At the feet of this trio lie the bodies of the murdered innocents — infants killed up to the age of two, according to the Gospel narrative (Mt 2:16). Mehoffer respects the medieval tradition of the personification of evil (the Triumph of Death), but sets it within a modern, Modernist context of a critique of political violence.

The inscription Gloria in excelsis Deo takes on a particular sharpness in the context of the window’s lower zone. The angel sings “peace to people of good will” directly above the scene of Herod carrying out the massacre. This iconological tension — peace proclaimed in heaven against the violence enacted on earth — is a theological gesture of programmatic significance: the truth revealed by God is an eschatological truth, an “already and not yet”, paradoxically present in a world that does not receive it. This is a position theologically akin to the Modernist writings of Léon Bloy (Le Salut par les Juifs, 1892), Charles Péguy (Le Mystère de la charité de Jeanne d’Arc, 1910), and, more broadly, to the Catholic movement of the Renouveau catholique of the early 20th century.

The traditional theological interpretation of the Adoration of the Magi (from Irenaeus and Augustine to Thomas Aquinas) sees in the Magi a figure of the calling of the Gentiles to salvation — the first revelation of Christ’s universality. The three Magi then represent the three parts of the world known to the Middle Ages (Europe, Asia, Africa — hence Balthasar as black in the tradition); their homage proclaims that Christ is the Messiah not only of Israel but of all nations. In Mehoffer this deliberate universalism is reinforced by the aspect of its collision with the particularism of Herod — a king who guards his throne even at the cost of a massacre, and thereby becomes the antagonist of Christian universalism.

Mehoffer’s most radical stylistic decision in “The Adoration of the Magi” — the fragmentation of the coloured surfaces into hundreds of tiny mosaic fields — carries a deep iconological meaning. Here the mosaic is not merely a stained-glass technique; it is a philosophy of the image, in which the single truth of the figure is born from a multitude of tiny individual fields. This deliberate solution can be read theologically (the Church as a mystical body built from individual members), anthropologically (the human personality as a mosaic of experiences), and in terms of the philosophy of history (the history of salvation as a mosaic of moments of revelation). At this level Mehoffer makes a gesture akin to Bergson’s theory, to the phenomenology of the early 20th century, and, in art, to pointillism (Seurat, Signac, 1880–1890) and to the coming Synthetic Cubism.

“The Adoration of the Magi” introduces two significant formal innovations into the cycle. First — the fragmentation of the mosaic of colour to a scale of hundreds of fields within a single robe, which constitutes a technological achievement of the Kirsch & Fleckner workshop. Second — a three-zone composition, in which the base zone functions as an autonomous dramatic counterpoint to the middle zone (the main scene). This two-layered “voice” of the window — heavenly-narrative versus political-tragic — will become for Mehoffer a recurring solution (The Martyrs, Nicholas of Flüe), but here it appears in a fully mature form.

Józef Mehoffer’s “The Adoration of the Magi” is a monument of European rank, combining the highest standards of the stained-glass craft (a “musical” mosaic, the masterly silver stain of the star) with a deep iconological programme (the Epiphany as a universalism set against the particular violence of Herod; peace proclaimed against the massacre). The innovation of including Herod, Death, the Devil and the Massacre of the Innocents in the base zone of an epiphanic window is a theologically and historically radical gesture, whose stature in sacred art around 1905 has no equivalent counterpart. The gigapixel digital documentation, carried out by the Foundation for the Virtualisation of National Cultural Heritage in 2025, makes possible for the first time a detailed analysis of the micro-fields of the mosaic of colour in the robes of Mary and the Magi — data critical for studies of the genesis of proto-Cubist thinking in Belle Époque stained glass.