Painted in London when the artist was nearly seventy years old, Moses Rescued from the Nile is undoubtedly the finest work from Orazio Gentileschi’s final period. Exquisitely refined and subtle in its emotions, it was conceived to please that most informed and demanding connoisseur of painting, King Philip IV of Spain. The artist sent it to him as a gift in the summer of 1633, and his son Francesco delivered it to him personally in Madrid. In October of that same year, English ambassador Arthur Hopton wrote that the monarch had been pleased by it and had ordered it to be hung at the Salón Nuevo in Madrid’s Alcázar Palace, alongside some of the finest paintings in the Royal Collection. Gentileschi rendered the scene as a modern homage to Veronese’s festive scenes, as the latter artist was much admired by both Philip IV and Gentileschi’s employer, Charles I of England. According to the Bible story depicted here (Exodus 2: 1-10), the newborn Jew, Moses, was set adrift in the Nile in a reed basket to keep the Egyptians from killing him. While bathing in the river with her servants, the Pharaoh’s daughter spied the basket, and when her servants brought her the child it contained, she decided to protect it. The young woman kneeling at the left of the painting is Miriam, Moses’s sister, who witnesses her baby brother’s rescue from the waters and approaches the princess to offer her mother’s services as a wet nurse. The princess, unaware of their relation, turns to Moses’s mother and entrusts her with the child’s care. With the exception of Moses, all of the figures are female and all wear heavy silk, satin and cotton clothing. The princess’s golden-yellow dress has edging embroidered with pearls and gems and her head is adorned with a matching tiara that Gentileschi paints with extraordinary delicacy. This artist always enjoyed depicting clothing, especially shiny and iridescent silks, and he was able to give free rein to this task at the Stuart court in London, which was much given to overly sumptuous ostentation. The scene is set in a lyrical landscape worthy of Titian, with the orange clarity of the dawn on the horizon and the Nile barely visible in the background. This is Gentileschi’s second depiction of this subject. The first version (private collection, Great Britain) is of the same size and was painted very shortly before this one. It was made for Charles I’s wife, Henrietta Maria of France, and hung at her Palladian villa -The Queen’s House- on the banks of the Thames in Greenwich. In the version for the king of Spain, Gentileschi softened the nudity and rendered the group of figures in a more compact manner, using a somewhat smaller scale and less elongated proportions. He also idealized the landscape and accentuated the luxury and qualities of the clothing and jewels. By that point in his life, he was quite far from the Caravaggesque painter he had been at the beginning of the 17th century. His second version of Moses is the finest example of the refined courtly artifice that characterizes his late aristocratic style.

Museo Nacional del Prado, 100 obras maestras: del Museo del Prado, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2008, p.106