Welcome to the National Gallery. My name is Letizia Treves and I'm the
Sassoon Curator of the Later Italian Paintings and today I'm going to talk to
you about this immense canvas behind me by Orazio Gentileschi.
It is The Finding of Moses, and some of you may be aware that we launched our
fundraising campaign because the National Gallery has been given a really
exceptional opportunity to acquire this picture and we have until the end of the
year to find the necessary funds to make this picture ours and make its permanent
home here in Trafalgar Square. Now Orazio may not be as familiar to many of
you as perhaps his daughter Artemisia, and you'll remember we bought our first
painting by Artemisia just in 2018 and she hangs just across the room, her
'Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria', and she will be featuring in
a major show I'm preparing for next spring. Orazio, apart from being just
her father and her teacher was a very significant artist in his own right in
the 17th century. He was actually born in Pisa in a family of artists. His father
was a goldsmith, his brother Aurelio was a painter as well, and he lived a very
long time. He died in his 70s and during the course of his career his style
changed enormously, and his very very long career spanned some key moments in
sort of art historical changes so his early works look very mannerist, still
very much rooted in a 16th century tradition, but as a boy he moved to Rome
and he met Caravaggio. So in the very early 1600s, the impact of that meeting
and of meeting this incredible revolutionary artist in Rome was
immediately seen in Orazio's styles. So his pictures become much more forcefully
lit, taking on this chiaroscuro for which Caravaggio is very famous, very
naturalistic, so he, like Caravaggio, famously painted directly from live
models. But after about 1610 his pictures assumed a sort of softer naturalism.
They're still very naturalistic, he still very much observes the world
around him, paints from real models, but there's a kind of gentleness to his
pictures and there's an increasing sense of
refinement and elegance, the pinnacle of which he achieves towards the end of his
life, when he comes to London. Orazio works first as I said in Rome, in Genoa,
in Turin, in Paris, and then he's invited to London where he spends the last
twelve years of his life at the court of Charles I as court painter, and
it is here in London that he paints 'The Finding of Moses'. The subject is of
course an Old Testament subject, and following Pharaoh's edict that all
newborn sons of Hebrews should be killed. Moses is placed by his mother in a
basket and hidden in the bullrushes on the River Nile. The baby is found by
Pharaoh's own daughter, and there she is in the centre. You can tell it's Pharaoh's
daughter because she's covered in jewels, she's wearing this glorious silk gown
this yellow satin gown and look at the beautiful silk sheen of her under skirt.
I mean, Orazio really achieves such technical skill, it's one of the things
he's greatest at. This painting of fabrics and textures and sheen on silk
and it's something you really do see in this picture, and this beautiful colour
palette as well. These very delicate shot colours. Look at the the two-toned purple
that turns blue in the light. I mean it's something that is very particular to Orazio
and something he really, you know, achieved enormous skill in doing. So
there she is, Pharaoh's daughter, and she's pointing at the infant Moses who's
being brought to her by one of her hand maidens who's half undressed because
they've been bathing in the River Nile. And whilst pointing at the baby who's sort
of wriggling in the baskets, very naturalistic baby you feel this is based
on a real baby, she actually turns to this woman here who's not dressed nearly
as splendidly and this is actually Moses's mother. So what happens is when
she places Moses in the basket she sends her daughter Miriam, Moses' sister to
keep an eye on him, and when Pharaoh's daughter finds Moses
Miriam comes forward and offers to find somebody to help nurse this child and
she actually goes to fetch her own mother, so Moses's mother, and that's what
is here, and we know it's her because also her shirt is unbuttoned suggesting
she's about to nurse the infant, and you can see Miriam is more small in scale.
She's a girl so it's obvious that she's kneeling before
the Pharaoh's daughter and also indicating her brother. The other
interesting thing about this picture is it's all about gestures. It's very
theatrical. It's like these figures are set on a
stage, not just the light, the costumes, but the whole setting of it, it feels
very theatrical. And as I say, you follow their hand gestures, and our
focus is very much on this infant wriggling in the basket and you see the
figures pointing out of the picture not really clear what they're pointing
towards. And the clue to that is really where this picture hung originally. So
the picture was painted whilst Orazio was at the court of Charles I,
but it was actually intended for the King's wife, the Catholic Queen Henrietta
Maria, and the painting hung in the Queen's House at Greenwich. The house
still stands there today, and the picture originally hung in the Great Hall which
is this incredible cube, the sort of 12 meters wide deep and high, and the
picture once hung there, and almost certainly hung on the west wall and what
they're actually pointing towards is a window, and through that window you can
still see the River Thames. And in fact if you look at this countryside this
little glimpse of countryside right here that really has nothing to do with Egypt
where this scene is actually set, that is very reminiscent of an English
countryside. So this picture is something that obviously had more meaning in the
sort of specific site for which it was probably made and certainly the site in
which it hung in the 17th century. Now the picture hung across another painting
by Orazio, today in Bilbao, and beneath a glorious ceiling an elaborate ceiling
decoration also by Orazio, so it's a sort of ode to Orazio, this whole space
belonging to the Queen. And this ceiling painting was his last great sort of
Commission in London. He died very shortly afterwards in 1639 and it is
thought that his daughter Artemisia who also came to London may have helped
collaborate on that, or bring at least the project to completion in its final
months. So it is an absolutely key work for Orazio, a sort of culmination of his
career. I mean no other picture reaches this sort of elegance and the scale and the
ambition of this picture is really remarkable. We simply aren't able
nowadays to find Baroque pictures with this sort of provenance with a kind of
royal pedigree and of this importance. The picture has been on loan to the
National Gallery for almost 20 years, so you'd be forgiven for thinking it was
ours already. But we really do feel it's a picture that would be transformative
for our collection. Until last year, of course, we didn't represent Artemisia and
we still don't represent Orazio in the Collection. It would be a
key work just in the context of the Italian Baroque collection, but it also
transcends that. This is the sort of picture that really goes beyond a school
and a period, because Orazio, alongside
Anthony Van Dyck and Peter Paul Rubens, who were also invited to the court of
Charles I, he really stands up there with these international artists
diplomats who really represent this, you know incredible moment in British
history and in British artistic patronage because there was no monarch
really since Charles I who collected art so voraciously but also
commissioned it. So it's important to think of this picture not just in the
beautiful context of the Italian Baroque collection in which we hang it today, but
really across the collection I just want to remind you that here at the National
Gallery we have Van Dyke's equestrian portrait of Charles I and of
course a picture by Rubens, 'Peace and War, also painted for Charles I,
in that context and it's really in that sort of courtly context that I want
to invite you to think about this picture. As I say we have until the end
of the year to raise funds to be able to keep this picture here and I would urge
you please to donate, however large or small, every donation counts and you can
do that in the room in the box but you can also do it online. We have seven
weeks to go but please help us keep this picture here, for free, forever. Thank you.
Thank you for watching, and if you'd like to make a donation, please go online and
please help us keep the finding of Moses here in Trafalgar Square on public
display for free, forever.
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