Moses Striking water from the Rock

This picture of Moses striking water from the rock has been dated to circa 1635 (see Judson and Ekkart, op. cit., 1999), the period when Honthorst was based in his native city of Utrecht and enjoying considerable international success among the courts of Europe. The composition depends on Honthorst’s earlier drawing in an Amsterdam private collection (Judson and Ekkart, op. cit., p. 327, D 3, pl. 2) with various differences, the most conspicuous being the inclusion here of the old woman at the centre and the highly engaging goat on the left, looking directly towards the viewer. Both the latter and the dress of the kneeling mother in the right foreground serve as structural and tonal repoussoirs to the figure of Moses and the agitated group of followers who crowd the background. Judson and Ekkart have observed that the same woman on the right and the kneeling young man drinking water at the centre of the composition recall two of the characters in Honthorst’s 1627 canvas, Shepherdess Adorned with Flowers in the Seattle Art Museum (op. cit., p. 53). They also note (ibid.) the similarity between the old cup-bearing woman, with her much-lined face and elaborate headdress, and that of the figure in the background of Honthorst’s Artemisia, a work also dated to circa 1635 (Princeton, Princeton University Art Museum). The main figures in the foreground were likely executed by Honthorst, while the secondary characters were delegated to his studio assistants, by then an integral part of the artist’s large and flourishing studio (ibid.) The fish head lid of the ewer, carried by the man on the extreme right, follows a design by Adam van Vianen (1568⁄9-1627), recorded in an etching by his son Christiaan van Vianen (see Houwink, op. cit., 1991, p. 432, fig. 9), which displays the Auricular style then fashionable in the Netherlands during the early seventeenth century.

Born in Utrecht, Honthorst trained with Abraham Bloemaert before departing for Rome, where he was first documented in 1616. His stay in Italy, thought to have lasted between seven and ten years, had an enduring influence on his style; inspired like many of his contemporaries by the revolutionary impact of Caravaggio, he created his own interpretation of chiaroscuro, brilliantly using tenebrist effects to earn himself commissions from the most important patrons in Rome and Florence, including Cardinal Scipione Borghese, Cosimo II de’ Medici and Vincenzo Giustiniani. His return to Utrecht was feted in 1620, when a party was thrown in his honour at ‘Het Poortgen’ (‘The Little Gate’) on 26 July, an event documented by Arnout van Buchell. He would become a key figure in the artistic culture of the city in the following decade, serving as dean of the Utrecht Guild of St Luke for several years. In this time, he continued to produce typically Caravaggesque pictures, invariably lit by an artificial light source within the composition, which confirmed his position as one of the leading members of the so-called Utrecht Caravaggists, alongside Dirck van Baburen and Hendrick ter Brugghen. In the mid-1620s, however, he began to modify his palette, introducing more vivid colours as he steadily abandoned chiaroscuro. It was a style that was well suited to the changing tastes of the era when the courts of Europe, including that of Prince Frederik Hendrik at The Hague, favoured pastoral and Classical themes, at the time when Dutch pastoral poetry and emblematic literature flourished. Honthorst painted a number of commissions for the exiled Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia, works that prompted an invitation to England in 1628 from her brother, King Charles I. After a successful period there in the employ of the king and his leading courtiers, Honthorst returned to Utrecht but continued to work for the Winter Queen in The Hague, executing commissions such as the imposing group portrait of The Four eldest children of the King and Queen of Bohemia (1631; British Royal Colllection). In 1635, the year in which the present picture is thought to have been painted, Honthorst sent to Denmark the first of a long series of classical and historical pictures commissioned by King Christian IV.