Finding of Moses
Pieter de Grebber(Haarlem ca. 1603 – 1652/53 Haarlem)ca. 1632–34
oil on panel
86.2 x 65.2 cm
PG-100© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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How to cite
DeWitt, Lloyd. “Finding of Moses” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 2nd ed. Edited by Arthur K.
Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017–20. https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/the-finding-of-moses/ (archived May2020).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive ismanaged by a permanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrativeoccurs.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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

infant 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 the abandoned child was discovered in a waterproof basket
floating on the river. His Hebrew mother had desperately relinquished him tothis fate to spare him an even worse end at the hands of the Egyptians, whowere carrying out a murderous purge of Hebrew infant boys. The Pharaoh
had ordered this massacre out of fear of the potential threat posed by thegrowing nation of the Israelites, who were then living in slavery 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’s wishes and had mercy on the child, adopting him as her own.

Fig 1. Pieter de Grebber, Moses
Striking the Rock, 1630, oil oncanvas, 165 x 132 cm, Musée desBeaux-Arts, Tourcoing, 876.2.1

She gave him the name Moses, because she “drew him from the water”(Exodus 2:10).
This heartwarming and dramatic narrative was of great interest to Christians
for many reasons, not least because it was understood as an Old Testament
prefiguration of the New Testament story of the Flight into Egypt, which
recounts the escape of Jesus from a similar massacre of Hebrew infant boysin Bethlehem after King Herod decreed 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 thePromised Land of Canaan, resonated with seventeenth-century Dutchpeople. The United Provinces had recently gained their own liberation fromFig 2. Studio of Rembrandt van
Rijn, The Finding of Moses, ca.
1635–40, oil on canvas, 48.6 x
60.2 cm, John G. Johnson
Collection, Philadelphia Museumof Art, Cat. 474

Spanish oppression under the leadership of William the Silent, who wasoften allegorically associated with Moses. Like Moses, William died before
the end of the struggle for liberation, and therefore he was never able topartake of this hard-won freedom.[1]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 situated along a diagonal that leads from the reeds at the water’sedge at lower right to the Pharaoh’s daughter, who sits on the bank at theleft. This compositional arrangement is consistent with De Grebber’s works

Fig 3. Pieter de Grebber, TheFinding of Moses, 1634, oil oncanvas, 170 x 229 cm,Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister,
Dresdenof the early 1630s, such as Raising of Lazarus from about 1632 (GalleriaSabauda, Turin) and Moses Striking the Rock from 1630 (fig 1).[2]The narrative clarity of Finding of Moses stands in stark contrast to theapproach taken by a member of Rembrandt van Rijn’s (1606–69) workshop© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Finding of Moses
Page 4 of 8in a piece executed around this time (fig 2). In this latter painting, the onlysurviving depiction of the story from Rembrandt’s workshop, nude femalebathers peer with great curiosity into Moses’s basket as it floats inthe Nile.[3] The artist emphasizes the surprise of their discovery through theirvaried expressions and emphatic gestures. For all of its visual appeal,
however, that image lacks the gravitas that characterizes De Grebber’sinterpretations of the story, which focus on the solemn moment when theinfant is delivered into the arms of Pharoah’s daughter. This act mirrors theascent of Moses from certain death to his honored position at the Egyptiancourt.
The Leiden Collection painting may be an unfinished work. In comparison toDe 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 less detailed than in other works of the early 1630s, suchas Moses Striking the Rock (fig 1). In the latter work De Grebber laboredassiduously to achieve a refined finish, rendering the plasticity of flesh in amanner that recalls the tactile qualities of paintings by his master Hendrick
Goltzius (1558–1617).
It is likely that De Grebber painted Finding of Moses for a commission thathe, for some 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,symmetrical composition. Peter Sutton has suggested that the Dresden
painting’sarrangement

wasmodeledon

thetraditional

ItalianRenaissance Sacra Conversazione, in which the enthroned Madonna andChild are surrounded by saints.[4] Although the Leiden Collection painting isloosely brushed and seemingly unfinished, it cannot be a preliminary 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 from frieze-like and diagonalcompositions in the early 1630s to grander, more hieratic and symmetricalarrangements of figures in the mid-1630s.
De Grebber, who was devoutly Catholic and painted many religious images
throughout his career, trained in Haarlem with Goltzius soon after that masterhad begun to paint in a classicizing style. De Grebber followed this approachand looked for inspiration to the art of classical antiquity and the High© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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Renaissance. He valued ideal forms and standards of beauty, and sought toarticulate in word and image the underlying rules and principles of art.[5]The narrative clarity, lavish modeling and beautiful light of De Grebber’spaintings caught the attention of important patrons such as Constantijn
Huygens (1596–1687), who helped De Grebber earn a number of important
commissions, including Apotheosis of Frederik Hendrik for Amalia van Solmsin the Oranjezaal in the Huis ten Bos, which he completed in 1649. He
painted these commissions according to rules he articulated in a broadsheet
published in 1648 entitled: “Rules, which need to be observed and followed
by a good draftsman and painter.”[6] A number of these principles are evident
in The Finding of Moses, including rule number three, which states: “Themain element of the story must be foregrounded in the most attractive part ofthe work.” In the Leiden Collection painting De Grebber placed thepresentation of the child in the center foreground, and bathed that area inglowing light. Rule seven reads: “Care must be taken to ensure that thefigures 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
another through 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 traditionin Dutch art in the early decades of the Golden Age.

- Lloyd DeWitt, 2017

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Finding of Moses
Page 6 of 8Endnotes

1. Simon Schama, The Embarassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in theGolden Age (New York, 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 deGrebber, Raising of Lazarus, see Herwig Guratzsch, Die Auferweckung des Lazarus in derniederländischen 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 SeventeenthCentury Painting (Exh. cat. Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen; Frankfurt amMain, 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 zuBerlin) (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 of Rembrandt 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; andPieter J. J. van Thiel, “De Grebbers 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.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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Provenance
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.

References
Sutton, Peter C. “Rembrandt and Peter de Grebber.” In Shop Talk: Studies in Honor ofSeymour 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-CenturyPainting. Edited by Albert Blankert et al., 130, under no. 16, fig. 16a. Exh. cat. Rotterdam,Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen; Frankfurt am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut. Rotterdam,
1999.

Technical Summary
The support is a rectangular composite panel comprising three vertically grained oak planks: awide central plank flanked by two similarly sized narrower planks.[1] Diagonal rasp marks along
the entire reverse as well as 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 the panel was thinned prior to being cradled. There
are no bevels, wax seals, stencils, labels, or panel maker’s marks.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied followed by paint applied thinly andsmoothly, wet into wet, with low brushmarks along the folds of the Pharaoh’s daughter’s whitedrapery, the blue drapery with gold fringe the daughter is seated on, and the green foliage along
the lower right corner. The ground is allowed to show through along the foreground and along thediagonally oriented green foliage on the mountainside, which has been stippled in. The blue-graypaint above the figures has been applied more opaquely, 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 eyes of 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© 2020 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Finding of Moses
Page 8 of 8reaches further into the infrared spectrum, may provide additional information. The images and Xradiograph reveal compositional changes to the group of figures in the center of the composition.
The gaze and profile of the woman presenting Moses to Pharaoh’s daughter have been shifted,
and the woman to her left, depicted in shadow, appears to have been added later in the paintstage.
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 is approximately 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.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection