Moses Makes Water Gush from a Rock

No date is recorded for this panel. Jacob Andries Beschey became a master of the Antwerp guild of Saint Luke in 1726 and died in 1786, so the painting sits somewhere inside those 60 years. The Antwerp he worked in was living off the century before it. Rubens had been dead since 1640, the river Scheldt was shut to seagoing trade, and what sold was the old Flemish manner supplied again in a lighter, rococo key, which is what Beschey did for a living. The subject comes from Exodus. The Israelites, out of Egypt and out of water, turn on Moses, and he strikes a rock with his staff until water runs from it. The panel is 51 by 66 centimetres, a size made for a room rather than a church, and it came to Athens as a gift from the University.