Moses descends from Mount Siniai with the Ten Commandments

This 1662 Moses Descends from Mount Sinai at the Royal Palace of Amsterdam was part of the monumental decorative program for Amsterdam's new Town Hall—one of the most ambitious civic building projects of the Dutch Golden Age. The Moses commission represented Bol's highest-prestige civic work: painting for the symbolic heart of the Dutch Republic's most powerful city. Moses carrying the Ten Commandments was an obvious choice for civic decoration, combining biblical authority with legal subject matter appropriate to a seat of civic government. The Town Hall commission elevated Bol's status and demonstrated that Dutch civic culture could employ narrative history painting alongside the portraiture for which Dutch painters were internationally celebrated.

The monumental composition presents Moses bearing the tablets with commanding presence, Bol's large-scale figure painting achieving the grandeur required by the civic setting of Amsterdam's most important public building.