During the first half of the seventeenth century it was common for painters who specialised in different genres – figure painting, still life, or landscape, for example – to come together to create works which appear remarkably uniform to us today. In the artistically fertile city of Antwerp, painters such as Peter Paul Rubens, Frans Snyders and Joos de Momper, frequently collaborated. Both Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen (who taught Snyders and Anthony van Dyck) worked on paintings with these and other artists, as well as each other, together producing a number of mythological, allegorical, and Old and New Testament scenes. It has been suggested that the man looking out at the viewer on the far left of the scene may even be a rare – indeed the only – self-portrait of Van Balen.

The subject of Moses striking the rock comes from Exodus 17: 1–7. The Israelites travelling through the desert are desperate for water and appeal to Moses, who turns to God for help. God tells Moses: ‘Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink.’ Van Balen and Brueghel depict the busy Israelite camp, with families, herds of animals, and some of the Elders, on the left; some figures rush to the miraculous stream of water with their bowls, centre left, while others in the foreground are already drinking from improbable goblets. The scene provides ample scope for Van Balen’s portrayal of a multitude of figures of different ages, in a variety of poses and costumes, as well as the still life elements, animals and landscape, overseen by Brueghel. This is a particularly detailed composition, which rewards close inspection, and the richness and brightness of the colours remain undiminished thanks to the large copper support (the size of which may hint at the significance of the circumstances surrounding the work’s original commission).

Another, smaller version of this composition in horizontal format on copper is known, stamped with the mark of the plate maker Pieter Stas and the date 1607, offered at Im Kinsky, Vienna, 19 June 2024, lot 3075 (42.5 x 62.5 cm.), which would appear to be one and the same as a painting sold in Vienna in 1931, published by Bettina Werche with an old black-and-white photograph and slightly differing dimensions.¹ A larger painting on panel in The Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead, would appear most likely to be a copy,² as would a version in upright format, known from a record at the RKD as being in a private collection in Overveen.³ Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen also produced another collaborative version of the subject, datable to around 1610, in which Moses’ striking of the rock is depicted as a detail in the background.⁴

¹ Oil on copper; 40 x 60 cm.; B. Werche, Hendrick van Balen (1575–1632). Ein Antwerpener Kabinettbildmaler der Rubenszeit, Brussels 2004, vol. I, p. 137, no. A 7, reproduced vol. II, p. 318, fig. A 7.

² Oil on panel; 75.7 x 106.1 cm.; inv. no. TWCMS: F9427.

³ https://rkd.nl/imageslite/324246

⁴ Oil on copper; 44.5 x 66.7 cm.; K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625), Lingen 2008, vol. III, p. 479, no. 214, reproduced in colour p. 480.