Finding of Moses
Pieter de Grebber(Haarlem ca. 1600 – 1652/53 Haarlem)ca. 1632–34
oil on panel
86.2 x 65.2 cm
PG-100© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Finding of Moses
Page 2 of 7

How to cite
DeWitt, Lloyd. “Finding of Moses” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 3rd ed. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
and Lara Yeager-Crasselt. New York, 2020–23. https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/ (archived December 2023).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive is managed by apermanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

On the reedy bank of the Nile River, a young woman tenderly presents the infantComparative Figures

Moses to the richly dressed daughter of Pharaoh who reaches forward to accept him
in her arms. This biblical scene, described in Exodus 2:1–10, recounts how theabandoned child was discovered in a waterproof basket floating on the river. His
Hebrew mother had desperately relinquished him to this fate to spare him an evenworse end at the hands of the Egyptians, who were carrying out a murderous purge ofHebrew infant boys. The Pharaoh had ordered this massacre out of fear of thepotential threat posed by the growing nation of the Israelites, who were then living inslavery in Egypt. He decreed: “Every son who is born you are to cast into the Nile,and every daughter you are to keep alive” (Exodus 1:22). Though Pharaoh’s daughter
recognized that the abandoned baby was Hebrew, she deliberately flouted her father’swishes and had mercy on the child, adopting him as her own. She gave him the nameMoses, because she “drew him from the water” (Exodus 2:10).

Fig 1. Pieter de Grebber, Moses
Striking the Rock, 1630, oil on canvas,
165 x 132 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts,
Tourcoing, 876.2.1

This heartwarming and dramatic narrative was of great interest to Christians for manyreasons, not least because it was understood as an Old Testament prefiguration of theNew Testament story of the Flight into Egypt, which recounts the escape of Jesus
from a similar massacre of Hebrew infant boys in Bethlehem after King Heroddecreed that all the male children in that town should be killed (Matthew 2:13–15).
The story of Moses, who would grow up to lead the Israelites out of bondage when
they crossed the Red Sea to the Promised Land of Canaan, resonated withseventeenth-century Dutch people. The United Provinces had recently gained theirown liberation from Spanish oppression under the leadership of William the Silent,
who was often allegorically associated with Moses. Like Moses, William died before

Fig 2. Studio of Rembrandt van Rijn,
The Finding of Moses, ca. 1635–40, oilon canvas, 48.6 x 60.2 cm, John G.
Johnson Collection, Philadelphia
Museum of Art, Cat. 474

the end of the struggle for liberation, and therefore he was never able to partake of
this hard-won freedom.[1]© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Finding of Moses
Page 3 of 7

Pieter de Grebber has cast the key characters in strong, diffused sunlight, and has
placed them against a dark background. Most of them are seen in profile and situatedalong a diagonal that leads from the reeds at the water’s edge at lower right to thePharaoh’s daughter, who sits on the bank at the left. This compositional arrangement
is consistent with De Grebber’s works of the early 1630s, such as Raising of Lazarus
from about 1632 (Galleria Sabauda, Turin) and Moses Striking the Rock from 1630 (fig 1).[2]The narrative clarity of Finding of Moses stands in stark contrast to the approachFig 3. Pieter de Grebber, The Findingof Moses, 1634, oil on canvas, 170 x229 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister,
Dresdentaken by a member of Rembrandt van Rijn’s (1606–69) workshop in a piece executedaround this time (fig 2). In this latter painting, the only surviving depiction of thestory from Rembrandt’s workshop, nude female bathers peer with great curiosity into
Moses’s basket as it floats in the Nile.[3] The artist emphasizes the surprise of theirdiscovery through their varied expressions and emphatic gestures. For all of its visualappeal, however, that image lacks the gravitas that characterizes De Grebber’sinterpretations of the story, which focus on the solemn moment when the infant isdelivered into the arms of Pharoah’s daughter. This act mirrors the ascent of Mosesfrom certain death to his honored position at the Egyptian court.
The Leiden Collection painting may be an unfinished work. In comparison to De
Grebber’s other paintings from this period, the figures are thinly painted, and much of
the background is indistinct and unresolved. The rendering of the figures is also lessdetailed than in other works of the early 1630s, such as Moses Striking the Rock (fig 1). In the latter work De Grebber labored assiduously to achieve a refined finish,rendering the plasticity of flesh in a manner that recalls the tactile qualities ofpaintings by his master Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617).
It is likely that De Grebber painted Finding of Moses for a commission that he, forsome reason or other, did not complete. In 1634 he excuted a larger, and very
different, version (fig 3), now in Dresden, with a more centralized, symmetricalcomposition. Peter Sutton has suggested that the Dresden painting’s arrangement wasmodeled on the traditional Italian Renaissance Sacra Conversazione, in which theenthroned Madonna and Child are surrounded by saints.[4] Although the Leiden
Collection painting is loosely brushed and seemingly unfinished, it cannot be apreliminary study for the Dresden version. Not only does the Dresden painting have ahorizontal format rather than a vertical one, its composition is reversed. Another
difference is that the Pharaoh’s daughter in the latter work is accompanied by
European attendants instead of African ones. The compositional differences between
these two works are revealing, and point to the evolution of De Grebber’s style fromfrieze-like and diagonal compositions in the early 1630s to grander, more hieratic andsymmetrical arrangements of figures in the mid-1630s.
© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Finding of Moses
Page 4 of 7

De Grebber, who was devoutly Catholic and painted many religious images
throughout his career, trained in Haarlem with Goltzius soon after that master had
begun to paint in a classicizing style. De Grebber followed this approach and looked
for inspiration to the art of classical antiquity and the High Renaissance. He valued
ideal forms and standards of beauty, and sought to articulate in word and image theunderlying rules and principles of art.[5]The narrative clarity, lavish modeling and beautiful light of De Grebber’s paintingscaught the attention of important patrons such as Constantijn Huygens (1596–1687),
whohelpedDe

Grebberearn

anumberofimportantcommissions,including Apotheosis of Frederik Hendrik for Amalia van Solms in the Oranjezaal in
the Huis ten Bos, which he completed in 1649. He painted thesecommissions according to rules he articulated in a broadsheet published in 1648
entitled: “Rules, which need to be observed and followed by a good draftsman andpainter.”[6] A number of these principles are evident in The Finding ofMoses, including rule number three, which states: “The main element of the story
must be foregrounded in the most attractive part of the work.” In the Leiden
Collection painting De Grebber placed the presentation of the child in the center
foreground, and bathed that area in glowing light. Rule seven reads: “Care must be
taken to ensure that the figures do not merely stand there, isolated from one another,
but they must be connected with one another so that they come to life through theirinteraction.” In Finding of Moses each of the characters are connected to one anotherthrough their movements, glances, and gestures.[7]The two versions of the Finding of Moses offer two very different, but equallyeffective solutions to the problem of telling this biblical story with grace andlucidity—the first more frieze-like, the second more hieratic. De Grebber’sachievements have a clarity and order that epitomizes the classical tradition in Dutch
art in the early decades of the Golden Age.

- Lloyd DeWitt, 2017

© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Finding of Moses
Page 5 of 7Endnotes
1. Simon Schama, The Embarassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (NewYork, 1987), 109–20, Peter C. Sutton, “Finding of Moses,” in Dutch Classicism in Seventeenth-Century
Painting, ed. Albert Blankert et al. (Exh. cat. Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen; Frankfurt
am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut) (Rotterdam, 1999), 128–30.
2. Peter C. Sutton, correspondence August 30, 1999, on file at The Leiden Collection. Pieter de Grebber,
Raising of Lazarus, see Herwig Guratzsch, Die Auferweckung des Lazarus in der niederländischen Kunst
von 1400 bis 1700: Ikonographie und Ikonologie, 2 vols. (Kortrijk, 1980), 2: no. 260, plate 122. Albert
Blankert et al., eds., Dutch Classicism in Seventeenth-Century Painting (Exh. cat. Rotterdam, MuseumBoijmans Van Beuningen; Frankfurt am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut) (Rotterdam, 1999), no. 15,125.
3. Ernst van de Wetering et al., Rembrandt: Quest of a Genius, ed. Bob van den Boogert (Exh. cat.
Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis; Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin)(Amsterdam, 2006), 32, fig. 22.
4. Peter Sutton, “Rembrandt and Peter de Grebber,” in Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive,ed. Cynthia P. Schneider, William W. Robinson, Alice I. Davies (Cambridge, 1995), 241. Peter Sutton,correspondence, 30 August 1999, on file at The Leiden Collection, also detected the influence ofRembrandt in the use of strong chiaroscuro to highlight the central figures in both paintings.
5. Albert Blankert et. al., eds., Dutch Classicism in Seventeenth-Century Painting (Exh. cat. Rotterdam,Museum Boijmans van Beuningen; Frankfurt am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut) (Rotterdam, 1999),
15, 21.
6. Albert Blankert et. al., eds., Dutch Classicism in Seventeenth-Century Painting (Exh. cat. Rotterdam,Museum Boijmans van Beuningen; Frankfurt am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut) (Rotterdam, 1999),
15, 21.
7. De Grebber published his broadsheet, “Regulen: Welcke by een goet Schilder en Teykenaer
geobserveert en achtervolght moeten warden,” in 1648.

See Albert Blankert et al., eds., Dutch

Classicism in Seventeenth-Century Painting (Exh. cat. Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen;Frankfurt am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut) (Rotterdam, 1999), i, 26; and Pieter J. J. van Thiel, “DeGrebbers regels van de kunst,” Oud Holland 80 (1965): 126–31.
8. Albert Blankert et al., eds., Dutch Classicism in Seventeenth-Century Painting (Exh. cat. Rotterdam,Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen; Frankfurt am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut) (Rotterdam, 1999), i.

Provenance© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Finding of Moses
Page 6 of 7

Gilbert de Poulton Nicholson, Berlin (his sale, Lepke, Berlin, 8 April 1924, no. 66).
Julio Alejandro da Cunha, Greenville, DE, by 1993 [Johnny van Haeften, Ltd., London, 2005].
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2005.

Exhibition History
Amsterdam, Hermitage Amsterdam, “Rembrandt and his Contemporaries: History Paintings from The
Leiden Collection,” 4 February–27 August 2023, no. 31 [lent by the present owner].

References
Sutton, Peter C. “Rembrandt and Peter de Grebber.” In Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive.
Edited by Cynthia P. Schneider, William W. Robinson, and Alice I. Davies, 241–44. Cambridge, 1995.
Sutton, Peter C. “Finding of Moses.” In Dutch Classicism in Seventeenth-Century Painting. Edited byAlbert Blankert et al., 130, under no. 16, fig. 16a. Exh. cat. Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans VanBeuningen; Frankfurt am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut. Rotterdam, 1999.
Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr., Christiaan Vogelaar, and Caroline van Cauwenberge. Rembrandt and His
Contemporaries: History Paintings from The Leiden Collection. Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Hermitage
Amsterdam. Zwolle, 2023, 138–41, no. 31. [Exhibition catalogue also published in Dutch.]

Technical Summary
The support is a rectangular composite panel comprising three vertically grained oak planks: a wide centralplank flanked by two similarly sized narrower planks.[1] Diagonal rasp marks along the entire reverse as wellas three exposed dowel channels perpendicular to the join between planks 1 and 2 and two dowel channels
perpendicular to the join between planks 2 and 3 indicate the location of previous panel cleats and that thepanel was thinned prior to being cradled. There are no bevels, wax seals, stencils, labels, or panel maker’smarks.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied followed by paint applied thinly and smoothly, wet
into wet, with low brushmarks along the folds of the Pharaoh’s daughter’s white drapery, the blue drapery
with gold fringe the daughter is seated on, and the green foliage along the lower right corner. The ground isallowed to show through along the foreground and along the diagonally oriented green foliage on the© 2024 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Finding of Moses
Page 7 of 7

mountainside, which has been stippled in. The blue-gray paint above the figures has been applied moreopaquely, and a halo of ground has been allowed to remain exposed surrounding the figures.
No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers, although the eyesof the woman presenting Moses and the mouth of the woman to her left may have been underdrawn in a dark
medium. Further investigation with an InGaAs camera, which reaches further into the infrared spectrum,
may provide additional information. The images and X-radiograph reveal compositional changes to the groupof figures in the center of the composition. The gaze and profile of the woman presenting Moses toPharaoh’s daughter have been shifted, and the woman to her left, depicted in shadow, appears to have been
added later in the paint stage.
The painting is unsigned and undated.
The painting was cleaned and restored in 2005 and remains in good state of preservation, although the left
panel join is slightly out of plane and remains visible in raking light.[2]Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The characterization of the wood is based on visual examination only. Viewed from the front: plank 1 isapproximately 20 cm wide; plank 2, approximately 28 cm wide; and plank 3, approximately 18 cm wide.
Worm holes are present along plank 1 only.
2. The painting was examined on-site without a stereomicroscope.

Magnification provided by 5X

Optivisor.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection