circumcision of the Son of Moses

This infrequently depicted theme of the circumcision of Moses’s son is taken from the Old Testament. According to the unclear formulation, Moses put his wife Zipporah and their two sons on a donkey and returned to Egypt to his compatriots living in captivity under the Egyptian pharaoh. Because Moses only circumcised his older son, God told him to kill the other son. However Zipporah circumcised him. 

The artist placed two figures, a man and woman in the foreground who take up almost the entire area of the painting. They kneel with their backs to each other, looking up to the sky where the head of God appears. Moses’s hands are joined, and according to the text the Lord inserted in them all the miracles that he would perform before the pharaoh. Zipporah bends over her son, holding his leg in one hand with a sharp object in the other and is ready to circumcise him. We can see the head of the donkey behind her carrying the basket with the other son. 

Observations on the Bratislava painting which determined the precise symbols and attribution remove any larger doubts about the artist. Antonio Zanchi of Venice is probably the artist who created this painting, The Circumcision of the Son of Moses. Particularly when comparing other works of Zanchi, this attribution becomes obvious.

Zuzana Ludiková ● LUDIKOVÁ, Zuzana - BURAN, Dušan. Talianska maľba = Italian Painting. Bratislava : Slovenská národná galéria, 2013. 242 strán. ISBN 9788080591748.