The Finding of Moses
Six elegantly dressed, light-skinned women, a man with dark brown skin, and a person of short stature gather around a nude baby boy in front of a landscape with a town in the distance in this vertical painting. Attention is focused on the baby, held by a woman kneeling to our lower left, and on a woman wearing a silver and gold-colored brocade dress standing near the center of the painting. The central woman's dress is trimmed with gold and jewels. She wears a pearl necklace, and her blond hair is wrapped with pearls around a gold, jeweled tiara. She leans to our right, toward another woman with blond, pearl-adorned hair wearing a blue and white stripped dress with puffed sleeves. In front of that pair, and along the right edge of the painting, another woman with pearls in her hair bends over a person of short stature and gestures toward the baby. The person of short stature has brown hair over a high forehead and a tan complexion. He holds an instrument like a recorder and wears a navy-blue and crimson-red jester’s costume. Seen from the waist up in the lower left corner of the painting, the man with brown skin has close-cropped black hair and wears a marigold-orange garment. Looking onto the scene from the sunken riverbed, he gazes to our right in profile and holds a basket. Above him, the woman holding the baby looks at the woman wearing silver and gold. An older woman holds up a cloth, presumably to wrap the baby. Another person looks on over that woman’s shoulder, and two more women stand farther back to our left, apart from this group. Behind the main scene, a few spindly trees with feathery pine-green or harvest-yellow leaves extend off the top edge of the canvas. An arched bridge spans the river in the distance to the left and beyond a town is painted in blue and gray against rocky hills. Blue sky above is strewn with white clouds.
Details
- Palette
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- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- overall: 58 x 44.5 cm (22 13/16 x 17 1/2 in.) framed: 81.12 × 67.95 × 7.3 cm (31 15/16 × 26 3/4 × 2 7/8 in.)
- Department
- CIS-R
- Holding institution
- National Gallery of Art
- Image provider
- national-gallery-of-art
- License
- CC0-1.0
- Credit
- Andrew W. Mellon Collection
Art Genome Taxonomy
9 tags
Subject Matter
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Bible Story Metadata · 99%
The catalog title, The Finding of Moses, identifies the subject as an episode from the Hebrew Bible.
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Narrative Both · 98%
The title identifies a specific biblical event, while the image visibly stages a group responding to and gathering around an infant through gestures and gazes.
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Human Figure Visual · 99%
Numerous clearly rendered human figures occupy the foreground and middle ground, including several women, a man, a short-statured figure, and a nude infant.
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Landscapes Both · 99%
Trees, rocky hills, a riverbed, arched bridge, distant town, and broad sky establish an extensive outdoor landscape; the catalog description also explicitly identifies the landscape and town.
Visual Qualities
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Dense Composition Visual · 93%
The lower and middle portions contain a tightly grouped arrangement of overlapping figures, garments, gestures, and landscape elements, despite the open sky above.
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Highly Ornamented Visual · 98%
The central woman’s brocade dress, pearl necklace, jeweled headpiece, and gold trim create a conspicuously elaborate ornamental focal point.
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Bright and Vivid Colors Visual · 93%
Strong blue and turquoise passages contrast with gold, orange, red, white, and deep green-brown accents in the sky, foliage, costumes, and figures.
Medium and Techniques
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Oil Painting Metadata · 99%
The catalog identifies the medium as oil on canvas.
Time Periods
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16th Century Art Metadata · 99%
The catalog dates the work to c. 1581/1582, placing it in the sixteenth century.
Source & rights
Veronese. The Finding of Moses. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.