God verschijnt aan Mozes in het brandend braambos 1607

This is Giovanni Lanfranco’s rendering of "God Appears to Moses in the Burning Bush," rendered in an etching sometime in the early to mid-17th century, now held at the Rijksmuseum. The composition is bisected, with the figure of Moses on the left kneeling and covering his face, and the figure of God appearing to Moses on the right. Lanfranco uses line to direct the viewer's eye from left to right, and the contrast between the darkness of Moses and the lightness of God emphasizes the divine encounter. The artist destabilizes the traditional representation of God. The semiotic system employed, with God emerging from a bush engulfed in flames, challenges fixed religious meanings by presenting a direct, almost tangible encounter between the divine and the human. Note the formal quality of the lines, how they function not just aesthetically but also as part of a larger religious and philosophical discourse, leaving the work open to ongoing interpretation and re-interpretation.