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Moses Striking Water from the Rock

Creator

Flemish Artist · 1593–1678

From the time of Peter Paul Rubens's death in 1640 until 1660, Jacob Jordaens was in greater demand than any other artist in northern Europe. He remained Antwerp's leading figure painter until his death. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Jordaens never went to Italy; he was born and lived his whole life in Antwerp, where he and his friend Rubens shared the same teacher. In the 1620s Jordaens buil

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Date: about 1645–1650
Medium: Oil on canvas
Culture: Flemish
Department: Paintings
Institution: Getty Museum
Object ID: 467b01ac-22a6-4b7c-849d-76f2cc526a29

From the Getty Museum record

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.

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