BY FRANCESCO BARZAGHI, MILAN, DATED 1869

The present group is almost certainly the earliest version discovered to date of 'Mosé salvato dalle acque’ by the distinguished Milanese sculptor, Francesco Barzaghi (d. 1892). Of the other known examples, one, dated 1870, sold Sotheby’s London, 17 May 2011, lot 70 (£181,250). The present sculpture (or the 1870 example) was possibly that exhibited in 1871 at the International Exhibition in London, appearing in an early photograph. A version was later exhibited at the Vienna World Fair in 1873 where it was described as one of the more successful masterpieces (M. Cottier, Exposition Universelle de Vienne en 1873, Rapport sur les beaux-arts, Paris, 1875, p. 23). Two further examples, dated respectively 1874 and 1875, are in the Museum Zamkowe W. Pszcynie, Poland and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Another model, dated 1876, was exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition; the illustrated catalogue describing it as, 'Among the specimens of that flexible, winning, seductive treatment of marble which made the Italian sculpture at the Centennial a revelation, a favorite specimen was The Finding of Moses, by Francesco Barzaghi’, and further eulogized, '[it] is a work of pure and gracious idyllic art… [a] pure and elevating piece of sculpture’ (The Masterpieces of the International Exhibition, Philadelphia, 1876, pp. 114-115). The 1876 model was acquired after the exhibition by The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and is now in a private collection (Descriptive Catalogue of the Permanent Collections of Works of Art, 1897, p. 166, D 700). Finally, another version was exhibited in 1878 at the Paris Exposition, and again Barzaghi received much acclaim for the superb modelling of the group (C. Lamarre, A. Roux, L’Italie et l’Exposition de 1878, Paris 1878, pp. 176-177). The fact that the sculpture was reproduced from at least 1869 to 1878 is a testament to the longevity of its popularity.

According to the Old Testament story, when the Pharaoh ordered the execution of all Israelite boys, the infant Moses was taken by his mother and placed in a basket by the River Nile where he was found by the Pharaoh's daughter and her attendants. A familiar subject in art history, its poignancy appealed to the sentimentality of the Victorian audience and was further disseminated by Gustave Doré's engraving of the scene in his hugely popular illustrated English Bible, published in 1866.