Melchior, after Three Magi series by Jacques Bellange

Art Historical Context

This etching, titled *Melchior*, captures one of the Three Magi from a series originally designed by Jacques Bell around 1615. by Matthäus Merian the Elder in collaboration with Jacob van der Heyden, the work translates Bell’s elegant, elongated figures the medium of etching The sheet measures roughly by 7 inches a size well-suited for among collectors and scholars the period. Bellange, active in the duchy of Lorraine, worked in a late Mannerist style that favored graceful poses and intricate detail. Merian and van der Heyden helped spread these designs across northern Europe through printmaking, allowing viewers far from France to encounter the biblical kings in their distinctive, expressive forms. The subject of Melchior, traditionally the eldest of the Magi, reflects the era’s enduring interest in devotional imagery that blended courtly elegance with religious narrative. As a print rather than a painting, the work highlights the growing importance of etching as an accessible art form in the early seventeenth century. Its presence in the Metropolitan Museum’s collection, gifted by Harry G. Friedman in 1962, underscores how such reproductive prints preserved and popularized influential designs for later generations.