Finding of Moses

The biblical account allows for a variety of compositions. There are several different moments in the story, which are quite often compressed or combined in depictions, and the moment shown, and even the identity of the figures, is often unclear. In particular, Miriam and Moses's mother, traditionally given the name Jochabed, may be thought to be included in the group around the princess.[3]

The Hebrew word usually translated as "basket" in verse 3 can also mean "ark", or small boat.[4] Both vessels appear in art, the ark in fact represented as though made of stiff sheets like solid wood,[5] rather than the ark of bulrushes preferred in recent religious traditions. The basket, usually with a rounded shape, is more common in Christian art (at least in the Western Church), and the ark more so in Jewish and Byzantine art; it is also used in the Islamic miniature described below.[6] In all traditions most depictions show a stretch of open river with few reeds, and the vessel is sometimes seen drifting along in the flow. Exceptions are many 19th-century depictions, and some in late medieval manuscripts of the Bible Moralisée type.

The Exposition of Moses, as his mother casts him off. The princess's party is further down the bank. Nicolas Poussin

The less common preceding scene of Moses being left in the reeds is formally called The Exposition of Moses.[7] In some depictions this is shown in the distance as a subsidiary scene, and some cycles, mostly illustrating books, show both scenes. In some cases it may be hard to distinguish between the two; usually the Exposition includes Moses' mother and sister, and sometimes his father and other figures.

Rivka Ulmer identifies recurrent "issues" in the iconography of the subject:[8]

1. Is Moses in an ark or basket?
2. The type of hand gesture of Pharaoh's daughter;
3. Who enters the Nile to fetch Moses?
4. The number and the gender of the "handmaids";
5. What role, if any, is assigned to the River Nile?
6. The presence or absence of Egyptian artifacts.

Detail of multi-scene miniature in the Eadwine Psalter, Canterbury, 1150s

Medieval depictions are sometimes found in illuminated manuscripts and other media. The incident was regarded as a typological precursor of the Annunciation, and sometimes paired with it. This probably accounts for it being represented as a faded fresco on the rear wall in the Annunciation by Jan van Eyck in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.[9] It might also be regarded as prefiguring "the reception of Christ by the community of the faithful",[10] the Resurrection of Jesus, and the escape from the Massacre of the Innocents by the Flight into Egypt.[11] The princess was often seen allegorically as representing the Church, or earlier the Gentile Church.[12] Alternatively, Moses might be a type for Saint Peter, and so by extension the Pope or Papacy.[13]

Cycles with the life of Moses were not common, but where they exist they may begin with this subject if they have more than about four scenes.[14] The 4th-century Brescia Casket includes it among its 4 or 5 relief scenes from the Life of Moses, and there is thought to have been a depiction (now lost) in the mosaics of Santa Maria Maggiore. There is a 12th-century cycle in stained glass in the Basilica of Saint-Denis which includes it. Cycles are most often paired with one of the Life of Christ, as later in the Sistine Chapel, where the scheme of paired cycles was intended to evoke the oldest Christian art.[15] There are several short cycles in luxury manuscripts of the Bible Moralisée and related types, some of which give the story more than one image.[16]

The depiction in the 12th-century English Eadwine Psalter has a naked female swimmer in the water, holding the empty ark with one hand, while a clothed female with her feet in the water holds out the baby to the princess, who reclines on a bed or litter. This is part of some 11 scenes of the life of Moses.[17] This may relate to the Jewish visual traditions covered below.[18]

The artist of a French Romanesque capital has enjoyed himself showing the infant Moses threatened by crocodiles and perhaps hippos, as often shown in classical depictions of the Nile landscape. This very rare treatment in fact anticipates modern Biblical criticism: "The cameo of the birth of Moses does not fit the reality of the Nile, where crocodiles would make it dangerous to send a babe in a basket onto the water or even to bathe by the shore: even if the poor were forced to take the risk, no princess would".[19]

• 
  12th-century glass, Saint-Denis
• 
  French Romanesque capital, aware of the classical tradition of the Nilotic landscape
• 
  Gothic misericord, Amiens Cathedral
• 
  Moses being "exposed", very much in an "ark", 15th-century miniature
• 
  The casting-off in the foreground, combined with the finding at rear, 15th-century.

Nicolas Poussin, 1647 (the "Pointel" version), Louvre. Men hunt hippos from a boat behind.

The walls of the Sistine Chapel had facing paired cycles of the lives of Christ and Moses in large frescos, and a Finding by Pietro Perugino began the Moses sequence on the altar wall until it was destroyed in the 1530s to make space for The Last Judgment by Michelangelo, along with a Nativity of Jesus. Perugino's Moses Leaving for Egypt now begins the cycle.[20]

Independent pictures of the subject became increasingly popular in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, when the combination of several elegantly dressed and graceful ladies with a waterside landscape or classical architectural background made it attractive to artists and patrons.[21] For Venice the story had a special resonance with the early history of the city.[22] These paintings were for homes and palaces, sometimes for foundling hospitals.

Niccolò dell'Abbate, c. 1570, Louvre

In addition, child abandonment remained a significant social issue in the period, with foundling hospitals, orphanages specifically for abandoned children, a common focus of charitable activity by the rich.[23] The seal of the London Foundling Hospital showed the scene, and the artist Francis Hayman gave them his painting of the subject, where it hung next to William Hogarth's painting of a slightly later episode of the young Moses and the princess.[24] We know a depiction by Charles de La Fosse was one of a pair of biblical subjects commissioned in 1701 for the billiards room at the Palace of Versailles, paired with Eliezer and Rebecca;[25] possibly the idea was to encourage those winning bets on the game to give their winnings to charity.

The 17th century saw the height of popularity for the subject, with Poussin painting it at least three times,[26] as well as a number of versions of The Exposition of Moses.[27] It has been suggested that the birth in 1638 of the future Louis XIV, whose parents had been childless for 23 years, may have been a factor in the interest of French artists. The poet Antoine Girard de Saint-Amant wrote an epic poem, Moyse sauvé between about 1638 and 1653.[28]

Bonifazio de' Pitati, 1545, Brera, Milan, 175 × 345 cm

As well as the Catholic countries, there were also a number of versions in Dutch Golden Age painting, where the Old Testament subject was considered unobjectionable, orphanages were run by boards of "regents" drawn from the local wealthy, and the story of Moses was also given contemporary political significance.[29] A painting of the subject shown on the wall behind The Astronomer by Vermeer may represent knowledge and science, as Moses was "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians".[30]

A painting by Bonifazio de' Pitati of 1545 was perhaps the first large and elaborate treatment of the subject to concentrate on a larger courtly group, entirely using carefully depicted contemporary costumes; he painted at least one smaller similar version of the subject.[31] Bonifazio painted a number of biblical subjects as "modern aristocratic reality", which was already an established pictorial mode in Venice.[32] This is essentially a large aristocratic picnic, complete with musicians, dwarves, many dogs and a monkey, and strolling lovers, where the baby represents an object of polite curiosity.[33] A Niccolò dell'Abbate from c. 1570, now in the Louvre, represents a more classical treatment, with the same "classical" costumes and atmosphere as his mythological subjects. This is closely followed by a number of compositions by Veronese, using the modern dress of his day.[34]

One of several treatments by Veronese, 1580s, Dijon.

The paintings of Veronese and others, especially Venetians,[5] offered some of the attractions of subjects from pagan mythology, but with a subject with a Christian context. Veronese had been called before the Inquisition in 1573 for his indecorous depiction of the Last Supper as an extravagant festivity mainly in modern dress, in what he renamed The Feast in the House of Levi. Since the Finding certainly called for a party of lavishly dressed court ladies and their attendants, it avoided such objections.[35]

Veronese's costumes, contemporary when he painted them in the 1570s and 1580s, became established as a sort of standard, and were copied and repeated in new compositions by a number of Venetian painters in the 18th century, during a "Veronese revival".[36] The famous painting by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo in the National Gallery of Scotland dates from the 1730s or 1740s, but avoids the fashion of that period and bases its costumes on a Veronese now in Dresden, but in Venice until 1747;[37] another Tiepolo now in the National Gallery of Victoria uses the style of Veronese even more thoroughly.[38]

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, National Gallery of Scotland, probably 1730s, now 202 × 342 cm

Nicolas Poussin was attracted both to subjects from the life of Moses and history subjects with an Egyptian setting.[39] His figures wore the 17th-century idea of ancient dress, and the cityscapes in the distant background include pyramids and obelisks, where previously most artists, for example, Veronese, had not attempted to represent a specifically Egyptian setting.[40] An exception is Niccolò dell'Abbate, whose broadly painted cityscape include several prominent triangular elements, although some might be gable-ends. Palm trees are also sometimes seen; European artists, even in the north, had been used to depicting these from painting the "Miracle of the Palm" on the Flight into Egypt in particular.

For good measure the main three versions by Poussin all include a Roman-style Nilus, the god or personification of the Nile, reclining with a cornucopia, in two of them in company with a sphinx,[41] which follows a specific classical statue in the Vatican.[42] His 1647 version for the banker Pointel (now Louvre) includes a hippopotamus hunt on the river in the background, adapted from the Roman Nile mosaic of Palestrina.[43] In a discussion at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1688, the painting was criticised for two breaches of artistic decorum: the princess' skin was too dark, and the pagan god was inappropriate in a biblical subject. Both details were corrected in a version in tapestry, though the sphinx survived.[44] Poussin's treatments show awareness of much of the scholarly interest in Moses in terms of what we now call comparative religion.[45]

Thereafter attempts at an authentic Egyptian setting were spasmodic, until the start of the 19th century, with the advent of modern Egyptology, and in art the development of Orientalism. By the late 19th-century exotic decor was often dominant, and several depictions concentrated on the ladies of the court, naked but for carefully researched jewellery. The reed beds in the Bible are often given prominence.[46] The extensive history of the scene in the cinema began in 1905, the year after Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema finished his painting, with the Finding the opening scene in a 5-minute biographical film by the French company Pathé.[47]

Orientalist depictions

• 
  Frederick Goodall, 1885
• 
  Edwin Long, 1886
• 
  James Tissot, 1896–1902, gouache
• 
  The Finding of Moses by Alma-Tadema, 1904
• 
  A painting by Paul Delaroche, before 1857, was much reproduced in prints and book illustrations