On-line gallery
- Reference number
- P00502
- Author
- Veronese, Paolo (Italian)
- Title
- Moses saved from the waters
- Chronology
- Ca. 1580
- Technique
- Support
- Measures
- 57 cm x 43 cm
- School
- Theme
- Shown
- No
- Entrance
- COLECCIONREAL
- Procedence
- Royal Collection
This scene from the Old Testament
(Exodus II, 5-6) depicts the moment
when the Pharaoh's daughter and her
ladies-in-waiting remove from the
Nile River the basket in which baby
Moses was placed by his Hebrew
mother in order to save him from
the slaughter of boy children
ordered by that ruler.
Outside the biblical text, Verones
has included a dwarf in the scene.
Dwarves were often present at
sixteenth-century European courts,
and the scene takes place in a
country setting around the Venetian
villas from the artist's time.
Rarely, in the history of painting,
has a religious subject been
treated so profanely.
This painting has been identified
as possibly being the one on that
subject that hung in the home of
the Marquis and Marchioness della
Torre in Venice during the
seventeenth century, although
another by Veronese on the same
subject was in the Gonzaga
collection in 1627. The present
work was first listed in Spain
during the 1666 inventory of the
Alcazar of Madrid.
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