Cleveland Museum of Art
Moses praying to end the serpents’ attack on the Israelites (folio 63 verso), from a Mirror of Holiness (Mir’at al-quds) of Father Jerome Xavier
- Date
- 1602–4
- Medium
- Gum tempera, ink, color, and gold on paper
- Culture
- Mughal India, Allahabad, made for Prince Salim (1569–1627)
- Department
- Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Object ID
- 163652
From the Cleveland Museum of Art record
After the Israelites complained about the difficulties of their journey out of Egypt, God punished them for their lack of gratitude by sending snakes to bite and plague them. Apparently reveling in the brutality of the scene, the artist shows men and women alike being savaged by snakes, one of whose tail slithers over the rulings of the right margin. An Israelite woman raises her hands and pleads with Moses to help them, promising repentance, and he intercedes on their behalf. Father Jerome used this episode to demonstrate how repentant believers merit salvation.
The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.
Get printable QR codesHide QR codes
Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.
Provenance & credit
As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Provenance
- before 1930s–2005: An Indian family in Great Britain, whose grandfather brought the manuscript to England in the 1930s or 1940s | 2005: (Oliver Forge and Brendan Lynch Ltd., London, England, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) | 2005–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Related across collections
Semantically similar works from Cleveland Museum of Art and other institutions.