The
National Gallery has established
two networks for the exploration, research, and enjoyment of sacred art, centred around sacred art in their permanent collection.
This initiative is part of their Art and Religion designated research strand, which is supported by Howard and Roberta Ahmanson. The first network, for faith community leaders and theologians, is the Interfaith Sacred Art Forum. The second, for curators and art historians, is the Sacred Art in Collections pre-1900 Network. Each year, both networks focus on a theme and two paintings in their collection as a foundation for wide-ranging events and activities that make new connections with sacred art, interfaith dialogue, and public life.
The 2021–22 theme has been
Crossing Borders and the two paintings were
'The Finding of Moses' (early 1630s) and
'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' (c.1620), both of which were painted by Orazio Gentileschi. 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' has been on loan to the National Gallery from Birmingham Museums Trust for the duration of the project and emphasises the importance that they place on partnerships with regional museums.
In 2022–23, the theme is
The Art of Creation and the two paintings, around which conversations and activities will be based, are: Rachel Ruysch’s
'Flowers in a Vase' (1685) and Claude Monet’s
'Flood Waters' (1896).
In my role at
St Martin-in-the-Fields I was involved in the discussions leading to the establishment of these networks and was a contributor to the first London Interfaith Sacred Art Symposium. This event brought together a cohort of 12 people from Jewish, Muslim and Christian backgrounds to share sacred texts - from Rumi's poetry and the Quran to Christina Rossetti and the Talmud. Participants included Fatimah Ashrif (Randeree Charitable Trust), Deborah Kahn-Harris (Leo Baeck College), and Jarel Robinson-Brown (St Botolph's-without-Aldgate Church).
Download the programme, texts and reflections, and speaker biographies [PDF].
My paper utilised the following texts:
‘Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, so that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots and chariot drivers.” So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at dawn the sea returned to its normal depth. As the Egyptians fled before it, the Lord tossed the Egyptians into the sea. The waters returned and covered the chariots and the chariot drivers, the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea; not one of them remained. But the Israelites walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.
Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore.’
Exodus 14. 26-30
‘And that the King was so emphatical and elaborat on this Theam against Tumults, and express'd with such a vehemence his hatred of them, will redound less perhaps then he was aware to the commendation of his Goverment… Not any thing, saith he, portends more Gods displeasure against a Nation, then when he suffers the clamours of the Vulgar to pass all bounds of Law & reverence to Authority. It portends rather his displeasure against a Tyrannous King, whose proud Throne he intends to overturn by that contemptible Vulgar; the sad cries and oppressions of whom his Royaltie regarded not. As for that supplicating People, they did no hurt either to Law or Autority, but stood for it rather in the Parlament against whom they fear'd would violate it.’
John Milton,
Eikonoklastes, IV. Upon the Insolency of the Tumults.
The paper I presented was as follows:
In responding to
The Finding of Moses I am seeking to use the approach to visual criticism described by
Cheryl Exum in her book
Art as Biblical Commentary, which includes identification of an interpretive crux. Exum says that ‘staging a meaningful conversation between the text and the canvas is often a matter of identifying an interpretative crux - a conundrum, gap, ambiguity or difficulty in the text, a stumbling block for interpretation or question that crops up repeatedly in artistic representations of it - and following its thread as it knits the text and painting together in complex and often unexpected ways.’
I want to suggest that decisions made by Orazio regarding the gender and class of those depicted provide an interpretive crux relating to the arc of the story as it bends towards liberation. The liberation found in the Moses story is that of the Exodus itself, with one of my source texts - Exodus 14. 26-30 – depicting a key moment in that story, the crossing of the Red Sea. Liberation in the setting of the painting involves the English Revolution for which John Milton’s
Eikonoklastes is a key text. Both these texts see liberation, in part, as involving freedom from an oppressive monarch.
Exploring the commissioning of the painting and its effect on the decisions Orazio Gentileschi made about where the scene is set and how the characters look helps in identifying this interpretative crux. Orazio was commissioned to paint
The Finding of Moses for the wife of King Charles I, Queen Henrietta Maria. The painting was almost certainly intended to celebrate the birth of their son and heir, the future Charles II. This leads to the setting which is an idyllic English landscape with gentle slopes and lush green trees. Orazio knew that the painting would be hung in the Queen’s House at Greenwich, on the banks of the Thames, where he also decorated the ceiling in the Great Hall. The setting of the painting therefore is in accord with the setting where it was to be hung.
Orazio paints Pharoah’s daughter and her attendants as though they were a Stuart Queen with her courtiers. The women’s gowns are exquisitely depicted in the style of the time and of the court, with the woman in the magnificent yellow gown embellished with jewels being Pharaoh’s daughter painted as an equivalent of Henrietta Maria.
Two aspects of the story to do with gender and class are highlighted by these decisions. The most striking and obvious element of this painting is the group of nine life-size female figures who crowd around the basket at the heart of the composition. Orazio’s decision not only reflects the significance of his patron and her courtiers but also points us to the significance of women in the story of Moses’ birth from the role of the Hebrew midwives to that of Moses’ sister and mother, and of Pharoah’s daughter herself-. Orazio’s decision to focus primarily on female figures may also prompt renewed reflection on his own story as a father who taught his daughter Artemisia to the extent that she had a career as an artist in a profession that was, at that time, predominantly male. Artemisia may have assisted him in painting the ceiling in the Great Hall at Greenwich, as she briefly joined him in London in the late 1630s. Additionally, Orazio defended Artemisia in court after her rape by Agostino Tassi, a fellow artist in Rome. The lengthy trial resulted in Tassi’s conviction and Artemisia’s departure for Florence but his defence of his daughter in this way, unusual at that time, may also have compromised his career prospects in Rome leading to his need to find employment in England.
As a result of Orazio’s focus, we see the significance of women in the biblical story and in Orazio’s personal story in ways that fit the arc of the story towards liberation from oppression – in this case patriarchal oppression - whilst also recognising the extent to which both stories still remain within patriarchal settings. In Orazio’s depiction of the scene this is made apparent by the fact that all the female characters are looking at or pointing to the one male character in the painting, who is both central to the image and to the story.
Second, our attention may turn to the contrasts within this scene which revolve around power or class dynamics. These are apparent primarily in the clothing of Miriam and her mother in contrast to that of Pharoah’s daughter and her attendants and also in the irony of the contrast between Moses born into slavery and Charles II born into royalty. Power, privilege, and wealth all reside in the royal characters depicted in this scene and yet the baby that is central to the image and the story will be the catalyst for the liberation of his enslaved people through plagues on Egyptian society and destruction of the Egyptian army. Again, the arc of the story bends towards liberation, which is somewhat ironic in the light of the fact that the image was painted to celebrate the birth of a royal baby who would see his father beheaded in a revolution and who would spend nine years in exile himself.
So, the decisions Orazio makes in depicting gender and class within this image bring a renewed focus on the arc of the story as it bends towards liberation while simultaneously highlighting the forces, both in the story and his own time, that were ranged against such liberation. For example, the focus that we see in this image on the agency of the women depicted is clearly predicated on wealth and position and not open to all, while also making the one male character central to the image. The liberation from monarchical oppression that Milton celebrated in Eikonoklastes and at which the painting also hints by equating Henrietta Maria with the Pharoah’s daughter whose world will be overturned by Moses, is then reversed by the restoration of the monarchy that followed the English Revolution. The Restoration not only brought Charles II to the throne but also enabled Henrietta Maria to reclaim The Finding of Moses as her personal property keeping it thereafter in her private apartments. This image, therefore, is a bend on the road towards a fuller liberation still to be achieved. The painting gestures towards the future crossing of boundaries in relation to gender and class without realising them fully in the present.
Orazio’s decisions around gender and class provide the kind of interpretive crux that Exum says she seeks; a conundrum, gap, ambiguity or difficulty, a stumbling block for interpretation or question that crops up repeatedly, and which, when we follow the thread knits the text and the painting together in complex and often unexpected ways. Orazio’s decisions highlight hidden aspects of the story and image that point towards the possible undermining of monarchical rule. Would this have been a deliberate strategy on the part of Orazio? We have no way of knowing, expect that the unusual support he gave to Artemesia suggests that he may have been a man living somewhat at odds with the societal assumptions made in his day and time.
Applying Exum’s approaches to visual criticism enable us to identify this interpretative crux to the story in a way that, I hope, also accords with her interest in exposing and undermining, in the interest of possible truth, interpretations that maintain and privilege the patriarchal cultural assumptions that underpin many Biblical texts. Her approach may enable us to picture Orazio as, to some degree, standing with Milton and the writer of Exodus in seeking to do the same.
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