He stretches out his staff towards the pole.
Bible in art · Numbers
The Brazen Serpent (Ms. 33, fol. 103, from the Weltchronik)
Unknown painter, Regensburg · about 1400–1410
Getty Center, Los Angeles
A band from the Regensburg Weltchronik, about 1400–1410, the German verse world history of Rudolf von Ems.
Moses, an old man in a white turban, points his staff at a snake wound round a golden pole. Between them men and women kneel with joined hands and look up at it.
From the text
- Venomous snakes among the people (Numbers 21:6)
- A bronze snake on a pole (Numbers 21:9)
The artist’s own
- The snake given a small beast’s head
- The people kneeling as if in prayer
Details
Moses
The people
They kneel with joined hands.
The pole
A white snake coils around a golden post.
The head
At the top the snake raises a small head.
Unknown illuminator, Regensburg; text by Rudolf von Ems (Austrian, about 1200–1254). The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (Ms. 33 (88.MP.70), fol. 103) · Tempera colors, gold, silver paint, and ink · Images provided here are believed to be in the public domain and are available under CC0 through Getty’s Open Content Program. (Getty record: "No Copyright", http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)