Moses and the Israelites after the Miracle of Water from the Rock

This is a painting on cloth, and that alone makes it rare. In the Netherlands of the 1520s, a patron who wanted large pictures on the walls but could not pay for tapestry could hang painted linen instead, worked in tempera bound with glue. Such cloths were cheaper and far more fragile, their colour tends to darken with age, and few have survived. Lucas van Leyden, much better known for his engravings, left only about 15 paintings, and this is one of them.

The story is from the Old Testament. In the desert the Israelites complain bitterly of thirst, and Moses, told by God what to do, strikes a rock with his rod so that water pours out. Lucas shows the travellers once the miracle is over, and he put the date and his initial on the rock itself, 1527 and the letter L.

By 1657 the cloth was probably in the Borghese collection in Rome. In 1900 the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg bought it on the Munich art market, and in 1954 that museum sold it, through a New York gallery, to the Museum of Fine Arts.