Moses' Journey into Egypt

One of the strangest episodes in the life of Moses sits at the centre of this fresco. The Book of Exodus gives it three short verses. On the road back to Egypt with his wife Zipporah and their sons, Moses is met at a lodging place by the Lord, who seeks to kill him, and Zipporah takes a sharp stone and circumcises their son. Here an angel steps into the middle of the road and stops Moses, who wears a yellow robe and a green cloak, and on the right Zipporah performs the rite on the younger boy, Eliezer. Further back, on the same line, Moses and his wife take leave of her father Jethro.

The subject was chosen to answer Perugino's Baptism of Christ on the opposite wall. Augustine and other early Christian writers called baptism a spiritual circumcision, so the old sign of the covenant with God and the new one meet across the width of the chapel.

Perugino painted the wall around 1482 with a team of assistants. Tradition gave the onlookers to the young Pinturicchio, but recent studies have cut back his share and point to other helpers named by Vasari, among them Andrea d'Assisi, known as l'Ingegno. In the middle distance on the left, a group of shepherds dances in the fields.