In blue and red, he reaches for the tablets.
Bible in art · Exodus
The Burning Bush (Ms. 101, fol. 13, from the Illustrated Vita Christi, with devotional supplements)
Unknown English painter · about 1480–1490
Getty Center, Los Angeles
This small book, a picture life of Christ with Old Testament scenes, was put together in East Anglia about 1480–1490; some of its pictures are much older English paintings. Its pages are only 17 cm tall.
Moses, barefoot, his shoes left on the grass, stands among his sheep. God, with a gold halo, looks out of a bush full of red flames and gives him the tablets; a scroll carries the words spoken from the bush.
From the text
- The bush burns but is not consumed (Exodus 3:2)
- “Take off your sandals” (Exodus 3:5)
- Moses tending Jethro’s flock (Exodus 3:1)
The artist’s own
- The tablets of the Law, given much later in the story, already in the scene
- God himself in the bush, where the text speaks of the angel of the LORD and of a voice
Details
Moses
In the bush
A haloed figure appears among the flames.
The shoes
A pair of shoes lies on the ground.
The scroll
A Latin banner curls across the sky.
Unknown illuminator, English (East Anglia). The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (Ms. 101 (2008.3), fol. 13) · Tempera colors and gold leaf, on parchment · 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/)