Passage over the Red Sea

The Passage over the Red Sea, an undated canvas at Audley End House in Essex, depicts one of the most dramatic episodes in Exodus — the miraculous parting of the sea that allowed the Israelites to escape Egypt while the pursuing army of Pharaoh was drowned. For Jacopo Bassano, who was consistently drawn to Exodus subjects with their combination of large crowd scenes, animals, dramatic events, and outdoor settings, the Red Sea crossing offered compositional challenges of the grandest kind. The vast crowd of Israelites, the towering walls of water, the panic of the Egyptian cavalry, and the figure of Moses extending his staff created a subject requiring orchestration of hundreds of figures across an expansive landscape. Audley End, one of England's finest Jacobean country houses, contains paintings collected over centuries by the owners of the estate, with Italian works acquired through the established channels of aristocratic collecting during the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries.

Oil on canvas, a Red Sea composition requires panoramic spatial management — the dense column of Israelites moving left to right, the vertical walls of water rising on either side, the drowned Egyptian army beginning to disappear on the far side. Bassano's crowd painting employs differentiated brushwork ranging from detailed foreground figures to increasingly summary middle and background elements. Dramatic sky treatment would amplify the supernatural character of the event.