About this work
Moses dominates the canvas as a three-quarter figure, slightly larger than life and set right at the painting's front edge — a placement that gives him an almost overwhelming physical presence. He raises the two stone tablets, inscribed with the Ten Commandments in the Hebrew alphabet, high above his head, and framed by his lifted arms and the dark stone slabs, his illuminated face marks the absolute centre of the composition.
The composition is strikingly cropped: the tablets reach the very top of the canvas, compressing any sense of open sky, while Moses's figure cuts off abruptly just below the waist.
The monumental effect is achieved through the near-abstract handling of the background, expressive brushwork, and a reduced colour range taken almost to a monochrome extreme — greyish veils that deepen the figure's isolation.
A quietly remarkable detail: the Hebrew inscription on the tablets is an accurate transcription, a mark of Rembrandt's characteristic precision.
Painted in 1659 as an oil on canvas,
the work is now held in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.
Rembrandt painted it at the age of 53, towards the end of his career. It was a period of profound personal turbulence: 1659 came just a year after his possessions and his house on the Sint-Anthonisbreestraat had been auctioned as a result of his insolvency. Yet far from diminishing his output, these pressures coincided with some of his most penetrating work. The brushwork of his late style is broader, with individual strokes left visible, and seems to be governed increasingly by a kind of purposeful chance.
Despite his dire financial straits, he continued to receive a small number of prestigious commissions throughout the 1650s and 1660s — and what are now considered some of his greatest paintings were created at this time.
It is uncertain whether *Jacob Wrestling with the Angel*, painted at almost the same moment, was intended as a companion piece, though both share a similarly overwhelming single-figure presence.
The large canvas, the striking expression on the face of the elderly Moses, and the indecision evident in the way he lifts the tablets all combine to make this a particularly moving, enigmatic image. As a print, it rewards a room where there is room to look — a study, a library, a hallway with generous wall space — somewhere a viewer can stand back and let the scale register. The tonal gravity of its near-monochrome palette makes it at home alongside dark wood, aged leather
