Note 15 — Chapter II
Reading edition
In fourteenth and fifteenth century paintings, especially among the Germans, Balthazar was often a Moor or negro, the tradition being that he was King of Ethiopia or Nubia. Ghirlandajo, in a picture at the Pitti Gallery, gives him, not a black complexion, but a black page. The difference of race indicated in the representations of the Three Kings implies the wideness of the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. On this account the three sons of Noah have been looked upon as typical of them.