The Test of Fire of Moses

Giorgione's Test of Fire of Moses, painted around 1505 and now in the Uffizi, Florence, depicts the infant Moses choosing burning coals over jewels in the legendary trial that saved his life at Pharaoh's court. The small panel demonstrates Giorgione's gift for transforming narrative subjects into atmospheric poems, with the figures set in a luminous landscape that conveys mood more than action. The work may be a pendant to the Judgment of Solomon.

Giorgione renders the biblical narrative with characteristic atmospheric subtlety, setting the small figures in a luminous landscape where mood and color carry more weight than dramatic narrative, in his signature poetic manner.