This rare ivory plaque, depicting The Adoration of the Magi (Matthew 2:1 – 12) and intended for private worship, was finely carved by Chinese craftsmen in Manila, in the Philippines. The plaque, carved from a single transversally cut section of elephant tusk, is remarkable for its sculptural and modelling quality, as well as for its fine polished surface.1

While the printed source from which it was replicated has yet to be identified, given the vast corpus of similar imagery produced within this chronology, its composition is analogous to an engraving by the Netherlandish artist Hendrik Goltzius (1558 – 1617), published in 1594 as part of a set on The Life of the Virgin. A copy of this print can be seen in The British Museum collection (inv. 1958,0712.14).

Evident from the characteristic treatment of the clouds, the almond shaped eyes of the figures — featuring the quintessential eyelid fold —, and the drapery geometric schematization, is the carver’s Chinese origin. Additionally, the gabled panel top points to it being the central panel of a folding triptych, of which the wings have been lost.

Such plaques, of complex religious iconography, were conceived as visual aids for devotional practices, and their production promoted by the Society of Jesus priests in their missionary activities in Asia, as well as for exporting, particularly to Central and South America and the Iberian Peninsula.2

Recent archaeological evidence, particularly from the shipwreck of the Manila galleon Santa Margarita (1601), sunken off the Mariana islands (Ladrones), has yielded abundant data on the chronology and production of such ivories, which, made in early-17th century Philippines by Chinese and Filipino master carvers, predate by several decades the Goan ivory carving production.3

Hugo Miguel Crespo

1 For comparable carving quality examples of identified European printed sources, see: Crespo, Hugo Miguel (ed.), The Art of Collecting. Lisbon, Europe and the Early

Modern World (1500 – 1800), Lisbon, AR-PAB, 2019, pp. 334 – 338, cat. 49.

2 Chong, Alan, ‘Christian ivories by Chinese artists. Macau, the Philippines, and elsewhere, late 16th and 17th centuries’, in Chong, Alan (ed.), Christianity in Asia. Sacred art and visual splendour (cat.), Singapore, Asian Civilisations Museum, 2016, pp. 204 – 207. See also: Bailey, Gauvin Alexander, ‘Translation and metamorphosis in the Catholic Ivories of China, Japan and the Philippines, 1561 – 1800’, in Silva, Nuno Vassallo e (ed.), Ivories in the Portuguese Empire, Lisbon, Scribe, 2013, pp. 233 – 290; Marcos, Margarita Estella, Marfiles de las provincias ultramarinas orientales de España y Portugal, Ciudad de México, Espejo de Obsidiana, 2010; and Trusted, Marjorie, ‘Propaganda an Luxury: Small-scale Baroque Sculptures in Viceregal America and the Philippines’, in Pierce, Donna, Osaka, Ronald (eds.), Asia and Spanish America. Trans-Pacific Artistic and Cultural Exchange, 1500-1850, Denver, Denver Art Museum, 2009, pp. 151-163.

3 Trusted, Marjorie, ‘Survivors of a Shipwreck: Ivories from a Manila Galleon of 1601’, Hispanic Research Journal, 14.5, 2013, pp. 446 – 462.