Balthazar: A Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance Art, ed. Kriten Collins and Bryan C. Keene, with an intro. by Henry Louis Gates Jr. Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2023, ix, 138 pp., 103 color fig., 1 frontispiece, 1 back piece.

The Bible does not inform us in any details about the background of the Three Holy Magi, and definitely does not specify that Balthazar was a (black) king. However, he is regularly depicted as such (crowned, but white), and this at the latest since tenth or eleventh centuries, and from then on this has become a trope most people do not even realize or understand. In order to shed more light on this phenomenon and to educate us on the presentation of this king later later shown to be black in medieval and Renaissance art, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles organized an exhibition from Nov. 19, 2019, to February 16, 2020 (