Moses and the Burning Bush, with Moses Removing His Shoes

This Moses and the Burning Bush from 1465 is a wing panel of the Holy Sacrament Altarpiece, depicting the theophany in which God appeared to Moses in a bush that burned without being consumed—interpreted by Christian theology as prefiguring Mary's virginal motherhood (bearing divine fire without being destroyed) and as a revelation of divine presence. Bouts sets the Old Testament narrative in a naturalistic landscape using the Flemish technique of precise observation. Moses removing his sandals before the holy ground enacts the ritual separation of sacred from profane space that typologically prefigures eucharistic reverence. The typological program of the altarpiece as a whole makes each wing scene a theological argument.

The burning bush and Moses's response are rendered with careful naturalistic detail despite the supernatural subject, Bouts maintaining his precise technique while depicting the most dramatic divine encounter in the Old Testament.