Moses Striking the Rock

Around the middle of the 18th century Augsburg was among the busiest print-publishing towns in the German lands, turning out numbered series of engravings of religious scenes and ornament. The Belvedere records this small oil sketch as the model for an engraving in a series from the Augsburg publisher Johann Georg Hertel, and dates it after 1755. Franz Sigrist the Elder painted it on paper in greys alone, which gave the engraver a design already worked out in light and shade. Moses raises his staff and water spurts from the rock while the Israelites crowd in to drink, one man sprawled on the ground with his mouth to the stream. In the foreground stands an ornate ewer with a scrolling handle, a piece of 18th-century tableware set down in the desert.