Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law

Reni Guido

(Bologna 1575 - 1642)

It is highly likely that this canvas was purchased by Scipione Borghese directly from Guido Reni, an artist much loved by the cardinal, who used every means, lawful and unlawful, to ensure his collaboration.

In this painting from Reni’s mature phase, Moses is descending the mountain, and is portrayed as he sees his people adoring the golden calf, and in anger hurls the tablets containing the Commandments. His mouth is open in an angry gesture, an emotion accentuated by a cloud-filled sky and the bold contrast of light and shadow.

Object details

Commentary

It is quite likely that Cardinal Scipione Borghese purchased this canvas directly from Guido Reni, who presumably produced it before 1620 or, according to Stephen Pepper (1988, p. 254, no. 83), in 1624-25, while working on a Saint Jerome (London, The National Gallery) who has the same face as the Borghese prophet. Recently, having observed specific references to a series of paintings (now at the Louvre) depicting the mythical character Hercules and produced by Reni for the Duke of Mantua, Massimo Francucci (2021) suggested 1621 as a possible date for the execution of this canvas. In fact, according to this scholar, the French works – especially Hercules on the Pyre (1617) and Hercules Slaying the Hydra (1620) – exhibit the same eloquent gestures as the Borghese painting. 

Unfortunately, little more is known of this painting, if not that in 1657 Francesco Scannelli listed it among the works included in the Borghese Collection (Scannelli 1657, p. 354), and in 1693 it was described as housed in Palazzo Borghese in Ripetta and ascribed to Guido Reni. This attribution was soon modified: in fact, during the 18th century the painting was mistakenly identified as an original work by Giovan Francesco Barbieri called Guercino, but its paternity was later corrected in favour of Guido, close to “the manner of Guercino,” by the compiler of the Inventario Fidecommissario of 1833 and thus recorded by Giovanni Piancastelli, first director of the Borghese Gallery. 

The painting depicts the prophet Moses in the act of hurling the Tablets of the Law against the Israelites whom, as the Bible tells us, he had found adoring a golden calf when he descended from Mount Sinai. Reni’s subject is wearing a heavy cloak that infuses the entire scene with grandeur and pathos, its scarlet hue mirroring the subject’s mouth that is wide with rage. The dull grey sky and the figure taking up the foreground give the painting an aura of nobly baroque drama, that is at the same time composed and solemn, which is typical of this painter’s style. 

A canvas depicting Moses’s Head, extrapolated from the Borghese painting, is held in storage at the National Gallery in Warsaw, while a painting with a similar subject, also by Reni, was purchased by Charles I and sold in 1649 (Levey 1964, p. 91). A replica with slight variations – mentioned by Carlo Cesare Malvasia and preserved today at the headquarters of the Gruppo Credem in Reggio Emilia – was probably painted by Reni for Pope Urban VIII in circa 1620-25 and mentioned in the inventory of Palazzo Barberini ai Giubbonari in 1671 (Pepper 1988, pp. 257-258, no. 91).     

Antonio Iommelli