Moses

Moses holds a rod and the tablets with the Ten Commandments. (The Hebrew has been copied imperfectly: Was the text provided by Angelo Giori, a learned patron of Valentin whose portrait is in another gallery?) This is not the fierce, vigorous prophet sculpted by Michelangelo but an aged figure—we seem to recognize the model—absorbed in thought. The picture was meant to appeal to antiquarian interests, for Moses is classically garbed and over his blue toga he wears a Roman cloak, or paludamentum, decorated with a Greek meander pattern. In 1637, the picture was sold in Venice by the painter Nicolas Régnier—painters also acted as dealers—to James, third Marquis Hamilton; it then entered the Habsburg collections in Vienna.