Moses and the Brazen Serpent

Corrado Giaquinto made this drawing, ‘Moses and the Brazen Serpent,’ using pen and brown ink with brown wash, during the 1700s in Italy. Giaquinto was court painter to Philip V of Spain and director of the Academy of Saint Luke in Rome. The drawing depicts a scene from the Book of Numbers in which God sends venomous snakes to punish the Israelites for speaking against him and Moses. As people die from snake bites, Moses prays to God for forgiveness. God instructs Moses to erect a bronze serpent on a pole, so that anyone who looks at it will be healed. Here, the foreground is filled with writhing figures. It gives us a sense of the embodied, visceral experience of suffering and salvation. But notice how, in the center, some figures turn towards the serpent on the pole, while others remain in anguish. Giaquinto seems to suggest that faith is a choice amid suffering. The drawing is less about the miraculous and more about the individuals' emotional responses to crisis.