1654, Nicolas Poussin, The Exposition of Moses -- Ashmolean Museum (Oxford)
From the museum label: Pharaoh ordered all Hebrew sons to be drowned in the Nile (Exodus 2: 2-4). Moses's mother put her baby into an ark made of bulrushes. His sister Miriam watched while Pharaoh's daughter came to the river and rescued the child, naming him Moses.
Poussin painted this in 1654 for his friend, the artist Jacques Stella. He chose to depict an episode of sorrow and despair rather than the popular scene of the finding of Moses. The setting is that of ancient Rome, the future home of Christianity. The sphinx and the river god identify the river Nile.
1654, Nicolas Poussin, The Exposition of Moses -- Ashmolean Museum (Oxford)
From the museum label: Pharaoh ordered all Hebrew sons to be drowned in the Nile (Exodus 2: 2-4). Moses's mother put her baby into an ark made of bulrushes. His sister Miriam watched while Pharaoh's daughter came to the river and rescued the child, naming him Moses.
Poussin painted this in 1654 for his friend, the artist Jacques Stella. He chose to depict an episode of sorrow and despair rather than the popular scene of the finding of Moses. The setting is that of ancient Rome, the future home of Christianity. The sphinx and the river god identify the river Nile.