Moses Trampling on Pharoah's Crown
Nicolas Poussin·1645
Historical Context
Moses Trampling on Pharaoh's Crown from around 1645 at Woburn Abbey depicts an episode from Josephus's Jewish Antiquities where the infant Moses, placed on Pharaoh's lap as a game, knocked off the royal crown and trampled it — an act interpreted as prophetic of his future role as the liberator of the Hebrew people. Poussin found in Josephus's account material that the canonical biblical text did not provide, using the Jewish historian's elaborations to extend the Moses story with episodes that enriched the theological narrative. His approach to Old Testament subjects was rigorous and scholarly, researching costume, setting, and narrative detail from all available ancient sources. Woburn Abbey, the ancestral seat of the Dukes of Bedford, assembled one of the finest collections of seventeenth-century painting in England during the eighteenth century, and this Poussin was among the distinguished works acquired in that period.
Technical Analysis
The composition presents the dramatic gesture with classical clarity and restraint. Poussin's measured palette and careful figure arrangement create a scene of prophetic significance.
Look Closer
- ◆The infant Moses tramples the crown with deliberate force — Poussin gives even a baby's foot narrative gravity appropriate to the prophetic act.
- ◆Pharaoh's reaction — whether amusement or alarm — is held ambiguous, keeping the anecdote's dramatic register pleasingly uncertain.
- ◆Poussin's characteristic frieze-like arrangement of figures reads left to right like a classical relief sculpture, organizing the scene with antique clarity.
- ◆The color contrast between Moses's warm flesh and the cold gold of the crown focuses the viewer's eye directly on the painting's symbolic action.
