Jew as the Antichrist in Modern Boschiana. In Dialogue with the Book by Mikhail Maizuls, Between Christ and Antichrist: Hieronymous Bosch's “The Adoration of the Magi.”

Abstract

This article appeared in connection with the book Between Christ and Antichrist: Hieronymus Bosch's “The Adoration of the Magi” by Mikhail Maizuls, whose focus is anti-Semitism as revealed in this triptych. Drawing on the research lens of the medievalist Debra Higgs Strickland, Maizuls examines specific archetypes of hostile otherness projected by Western Christians onto the images of the Antichrist. The author sees the key to the Adoration of the Magi in the face of the Magi in a red mantle, for he is perceived “as the antichrist/Jewish Messiah.” The basis for the advancement of the Jew-Antichrist concept was the crystallization by the 13th century of the stereotypical iconographic form of the Jew, which made no difference between the biblical Jews, who crucified Jesus, and the Jews of the Middle Ages. In the end, the researcher comes to the conclusion that Bosch was one of the first artists, who put the semantic center of his triptychs' central parts not so much on the image of the New Testament collision as