The Finding of Moses

The Finding of Moses takes its subject from the Book of Exodus, showing the infant Moses discovered in his basket on the Nile by the pharaoh’s daughter. Paolo Veronese, the great decorative painter of the Venetian High Renaissance, treated the biblical episode as a sumptuous court scene, filling it with opulent costume, attendants and pageantry in the manner for which he was famous. Painted about 1581 and 1582, in the artist’s last years, the small canvas condenses the splendour of his large ceremonial pictures into a jewel-like near-roundel.