In the National Gallery we have so many
paintings which represent the events of
the Christmas season. Stars appear to
the shepherds with angels and then
particularly the guiding star that
brings the Kings to worship the Christ child.
I think Carlo Dolci's
'Adoration of the Kings' contains one of
the most beautiful and absolutely
blinding representations of a guiding
star of all the paintings in the gallery.
The star rises and the Three Kings see it
as a sign of the fact that the Christ child
has been born and they follow the
star to Bethlehem and the star comes to
rest and comes to stop at the house
where the Christ child has been born,
interestingly a house and not a stable
according to the Gospel.
They're wearing the richest possible
garments replete with embroidery with
fur with gilded touches. You can't
imagine anything more opulent except for
the guiding star and I think that just
is the most striking thing about this
painting, it's the biggest guiding star
you've ever seen.
We know that this particular subject had
a significance, for Dolci, he painted it on
a number of occasions and in this
particular representation in the
National Gallery he includes his own
portrait and you see him behind the Magi,
also showing himself in adoration of
the Christ child, drawn by that magnetic star.
One particularly lovely star is in
Jan Brueghel's 'Adoration of the Kings'.
If you look really closely at this magical
little picture it's possible to pick out
a perfect six-pointed star surrounded
in beautiful golden light that somehow
manages in the night sky to reach down
as far as the hay or straw roof of the
stable and the loft of the stable itself.
I think this painting would be the most
perfect advent calendar.
There's a lot of detail in this particular painting and
in some ways it's not hard to imagine
wise men travelling a long distance would
have needed a star to find the right
stable in this particular town because
it's just so busy.
In the painting of 'The Adoration of the Magi'
by Filippino Lippi we have really
quite an unusual scene because we have
several things happening simultaneously
to give a sense of continuous narrative.
At the right-hand side of the painting
we see the Magi entering the scene on
their journey from Jerusalem, you see
them disappear behind the hill and then
they reappear again at the foreground of
the painting where they kneel in
devotion in front of the Virgin and Child.
This is a landscape scene that is
bathed in light which means that the
star might not be as dominant as it
might first appear in other paintings
which are set in more of a nocturnal scene.
In many other images we might find
a five or seven or eight-pointed star
whereas here what we have is a star
that looks more like a firework because
it has its main starburst and then these
smaller bursts going on below it,
and then the star actually descends
all the way down to the Virgin herself,
creating this link between the Virgin
and heavens and denoting the idea that
this is a child
unlike any other because the Virgin
herself has been blessed by God.
Jan Gossaert's 'The Adoration of the Kings'
is a very large painting. It was made as an
altarpiece for a church at the beginning
of the 16th century. There's so much
going on in it and there are some
absolutely beautiful details.
The dove is, in Christian artwork, seen as a
symbol of the Holy Ghost and below
of course we have the Christ child which
raises all sorts of questions,
particularly along the lines of is this
a depiction of the Trinity, because we
have Christ, we have the Holy Ghost so
therefore we also have the star?
Does that Star make a reference to God in
this particular context?
Stars illuminate the National Gallery
from beginning to end.
They're almost in every room, they can be
in the night sky where you'd expect them to be,
they can be on clothing and
sometimes they're really hidden but
wherever they are you can guarantee that
there will be something really
intriguing about the way that
every artist who chooses to paint a star
has gone about doing it.