Finding Moses

         Today I have for you a chiaroscuro woodcut by John Baptist Jackson (UK 1701-1780) a British artist who worked in Venice for a while, where he was obviously very interested in the artists of the Venetian school.  In 1745, his last year in Venice, he produced a series of 19 major wood block prints reproducing paintings on Biblical subjects by Venetian masters.  This one is entitled “The Finding of Moses” by Paolo Veronese (1528-1588), and while normally I’m less interested in block printing as a mere method of reproduction, there are some interesting things about this one.

        First of all, chiaroscuro is all about the drama of light and shadow.  You can brush up on the basics of chiaroscuro block prints here.  At their most basic, chiaroscuro prints include just two colors, medium and dark, in addition to the white paper.  Jackson, however, made some innovations to the technique.  Apparently he developed new inks to facilitate a wider range of colors, and in this piece I think I see four colors of ink, plus the paper.  It makes the whole thing look a bit like a sepia-toned photograph, but obviously this can’t have been Jackson’s goal, since this was still quite a long time before the invention of photography.

        The other thing that’s interesting is that I can’t find the exact painting on which this piece was based.  Veronese seems to have painted the subject of Pharaoh’s daughter finding Moses multiple times, but although I can find 7 different examples on-line, not one of them matches this print.  This raises the question of how closely Jackson followed his model, or whether he chose to make changes in the composition to suit the new medium and color scheme.  So although Moses is being found in this print, I haven’t found the Moses it was based on!  (Here is Wikipedia’s link to 7 versions, in case you’re curious.)

        Things I particularly like about this piece include the pyramids in the background, how the background is only light colors, the beautiful trees, and how the Pharaoh’s daughter is anachronistically dressed like a Venetian princess of about 1580.  (It always tickles me when artists paint historical subjects in contemporary dress.)  And of course the carving is very impressive, as is the chiaroscuro shading.  This is not a style or technique I’m ever likely to do myself, but it’s always cool to see how a master artist tackles it.

[Picture: The Finding of Moses, wood block print by John Baptist Jackson based on a painting by Veronese, 1745 (Image from Princeton University Library).]