Moses Turning Aaron's Staff into a Serpent

Around 1646 Poussin painted this and the scene of the infant Moses trampling Pharaoh's crown as a pair for Camillo Massimi, a Roman collector and close friend who later became a cardinal. In the gallery of Massimi's palace near the Quattro Fontane they hung facing each other, one on the south wall and one on the north. In Exodus, Aaron throws down his staff before Pharaoh and it turns into a snake. Pharaoh's magicians do the same with theirs, and Aaron's snake swallows them. Here the serpents already twist across the floor. In 1683 both pictures were bought for Louis XIV, and today they hang together again in Room 826. They are darker than Poussin meant them to be. He laid them on a red ochre ground with a thin coat of charcoal black, and that black now shows through the paint.