The Exposition of Moses

The Exposition of Moses from 1624 at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden is among Poussin's earliest known works from his first years in Rome, showing him beginning to develop his approach to Old Testament narrative within the Italian Baroque milieu of his formation. The scene of Moses set adrift on the Nile by his mother, concealed in a basket of reeds to save him from Pharaoh's decree that all Hebrew male infants be killed, provided material for a composition combining the Egyptian riverside setting with a group of figures expressing tender parental anguish. Poussin approached Old Testament subjects with rigorous compositional logic, researching costume, architecture, and landscape from scholarly sources, and his Egyptian settings were the most archaeologically ambitious of his biblical compositions. The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden holds this as the earliest major Poussin in its collection, alongside works from across his career that document his extraordinary development.

The composition arranges the riverside scene with developing classical clarity. Poussin's early palette and figure handling show his emerging mastery of narrative composition.