The Work
Edward Burne-Jones's The Star of Bethlehem, a monumental oil painting measuring approximately 255 by 350 centimeters, was commissioned for Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and completed in 1890. It depicts the Adoration of the Magi - the three kings in elaborate medieval court costume kneeling and presenting their gifts before the Virgin and Child - while above them an angel leans forward pointing to the great star in the night sky. The composition is organized as a fabric-like frieze, with the richly decorated figures filling the picture plane in the manner of a William Morris textile. A related fabric version, woven at Morris & Co. in Merton Abbey, became one of the most widely reproduced Nativity images of the Victorian period.
Biblical Source
Matthew 2:10-11 records the Magi's arrival: 'When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.' Burne-Jones depicts the moment of kneeling worship, the star still visible above, the gifts held forward. Isaiah 60:3 - 'Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn' - provides the prophetic background that Matthew's narrative fulfills.
The Artist
Burne-Jones designed the Star of Bethlehem as a monumental gallery painting that would function simultaneously as a design template for fabric production. The Morris & Co. fabric woven from this design was produced in multiple versions - for chapels, churches, and private collections - making the image familiar across the English-speaking world. Burne-Jones spent years on the preparatory cartoons and figure studies, and the finished painting is among the largest and most ambitious works of his career.
Iconography
The Magi in Burne-Jones's treatment are presented not as Oriental potentates but as Gothic kings with the refinement and earnestness of Pre-Raphaelite knights. Their elaborate embroidered robes are medieval in character; their gifts are presented with the gravity of a liturgical act. The angel above, pointing to the star, connects the visual narrative between the event below and the cosmic event above. The Virgin and Child at the center, with the infant in the exact frontal pose derived from Byzantine icons, give the image its devotional anchor amid the surrounding splendor.
Significance
The Star of Bethlehem became one of the definitive Victorian images of the Nativity, both in its gallery version (which drew enormous crowds at Birmingham) and in the fabric versions that decorated church interiors across Britain and the English-speaking world. The Morris & Co. fabric, produced in a large format (c. 245 by 470 cm), was installed in the chapel of Exeter College, Oxford, at Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street, London, and at multiple other locations. The painting exemplifies the Victorian ambition to restore the alliance between fine art and craft that the Renaissance had broken.
The fabric version of The Star of Bethlehem, woven at the William Morris workshops at Merton Abbey and exhibited at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in 1890, became one of the most widely distributed religious images in late Victorian Britain. Versions were installed in churches and private chapels throughout England and the English-speaking world, and the image reached hundreds of thousands of viewers through reproduction in gift books, devotional calendars, and Christmas cards. The collaboration between Burne-Jones's painterly imagination and Morris's craft workshop -- which produced some of the finest textiles and stained glass of the period -- gave the Adoration image a material richness fully appropriate to the theological event depicted.
The theological reading of the Adoration implicit in Burne-Jones's image emphasizes the universality of the homage paid to Christ: the three kings represent the wisdom of the Gentile nations, the farthest reaches of human learning and culture, coming to acknowledge the Jewish child who is the fulfillment of all human searching. This universalist theology -- drawn from Isaiah 60:3 ('Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn') and the genealogy of Matthew 1, which includes Gentile women -- was particularly resonant for a Victorian public that was simultaneously confident of Western cultural superiority and anxious about the challenges to Christian civilization represented by scientific naturalism, biblical criticism, and the plurality of world religions.## Visiting Info
The original Star of Bethlehem painting is in the permanent collection of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (BMAG) in Birmingham, England. The museum is free to enter and is located in Chamberlain Square in the city center. Birmingham is served by direct trains from London (90 minutes) and Manchester (90 minutes). The museum's Pre-Raphaelite collection is one of the finest in the world, including major works by Millais, Holman Hunt, and Rossetti alongside the Burne-Jones holdings.