ABSTRACT
In the years leading to 1580, the Venetian painter Paolo Veronese painted several versions of the “Finding of Moses,” perhaps most notably for the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph II, nephew of Philip II of Spain. (Fig. 3.1, Veronese, Finding of Moses [c. 1580]).1 Although the bibliography regarding these works is sparse, Veronese’s choice to depict the episode from Exodus has been viewed as the painter’s response to post-Tridentine concerns over the propriety of the type of sensuous mythological studies that the artist had most recently been commissioned to create for Rudolph, such as the “Mars and Venus United by Love” (1576-1582) currently in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Having spent eight years at the court of his uncle, the emperor sought to emulate Philip II’s collection of Titians, based largely on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and so commissioned another Venetian artist known for his sumptuous use of color and attention to detail. As is well-known, Veronese had previously been brought before the Inquisition (1573) because of the perceived impropriety of many of the attendees represented in a version of the Last Supper; the dispute was resolved by renaming the work Dinner in the House of Levi, but the choice of an Old Testament narrative may reflect Veronese’s attempt to achieve a middle ground by representing neither a classical subject that might be deemed too lascivious nor a New Testament subject whose depiction could prove too lively or secular for the censors. In W.R. Rearick’s view, “the Finding of Moses, with its sumptuous princess, lavish court with dwarfs and dogs, charming baby and expansive river landscape” allowed the artist to create “a theatrical spectacle that is pagan in all but name.”2 Similarly, Giles Robertson describes another of Veronese’s versions of the work-that in the Gemaeldegalerie, Dresden, as “a gay record of a contemporary picnic in fine modern clothes set in a local landscape, and the subject is but the excuse for this display of finery, as so often in his work, and as indeed, led him into trouble with the Inquisition on another occasion.”3
