Moses Striking Water from the Rock

Download4000 × 1752 px View on a wall Edit

Artist: Jacob Jordaens (Flemish, 1593–1678)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 129.5 × 269.2 cm (51 × 106 in.)
Culture: Flemish
Museum: J. Paul Getty Museum
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

A crowd of Israelites gathers to observe a dramatic Old Testament miracle. After they wandered in the wilderness of the Sinai Desert without water, God saved them by instructing Moses to strike a rock with his staff, whereupon fresh water gushed out.

Jacob Jordaens conveyed the scene's drama through energetic motion and repetition. Using a characteristically Baroque sweeping horizontal composition, he effortlessly interwove human figures and animals into a frieze that follows from left to right, from anticipation--with jars and drinking vessels at the ready--to Moses' theatrical gesture. The figures' proportions and subtle foreshortening indicate that Jordaens intended the picture to be viewed from below.

Here Jordaens repeated a subject he had first attempted nearly three decades earlier, following his usual practice of reworking ideas and finding new solutions. As here, the devoted Calvinist Jordaens often made instructive, rather than devotional, religious pictures.

Text: J. Paul Getty Trust, CC BY 4.0.