(3) Vintage 1930s Mexican Folk Art Hand Painted Wooden Wall-Hanging Magi Figures. Carved and painted narrow wooden pieces with small hangers attached at the tops on the backs. Depicted as they often are from the Christian Medieval period onward, with the eldest, Turkish King Caspar, bearing the gold, the middle-aged King Melchior of Arabia bearing frankincense, and the youthful King Balthazar of Africa bearing the myrrh. Labels on the backs indicate they were bought by the consignor from La Casa Encantada on St. Armand's Key, Florida. 

Condition: Some chips to the wood and fading to the paint. Commensurate with age. 

Largest Size: 19 1/2 x 4 3/4 in. 

One of the central elements of the birth of Christ as described in multiple books of the Christian Bible is the appearance of three regal individuals from different parts of the known world who offered gifts and adoration to the child, as a form of earthly validation to his status as the King of Kings. Unnamed in the earliest writings, the three Magi (known most commonly in modern retellings as The Three Wise Men) developed distinct characteristics in Christian tradition as well as unique names, so that between them they represented the three ages of (adult) man, three geographical and cultural areas, and sometimes other concepts. In several Western European traditions, reflected in art by at least the 14th Century, Caspar is old, normally with a white beard, and gives the gold. He is known as “King of Tarsus, land of merchants” on the Mediterranean coast of modern Turkey, and is first in line to kneel to Christ. Melchior is middle-aged, giving frankincense from Arabia, and Balthazar is a young man, very often and increasingly black-skinned, with myrrh from Saba (modern southern Yemen). Their ages were usually given as 60, 40 and 20 respectively, and their geographical origins were rather variable, with Balthazar increasingly coming from Aksum or other parts of Africa, and being represented accordingly. Balthazar’s blackness has been the subject of considerable scholarly attention since the beginning of the 20th Century, and in art it is found mostly in northern Europe, beginning from the 12th Century, and becoming very common by the 15th. The subject of which king is which and who brought which gift is not without some variation depending on the tradition, as the gift of gold is sometimes associated with Melchior as well, and in some traditions Melchior is the oldest of the three Magi. Today the story of their pilgrimage and worship is so ingrained in the mythos surrounding Jesus and his birth that they are ubiquitous, having been portrayed in these three distinct skin tones and ages in books, films, operas, and much more since the 19th Century onward.

Some chips to the wood and fading to the paint. Commensurate with age.