Moses Striking the Rock

François Verdier · n.d.

Medium

Pen and black ink, black crayon, brush and black ink, and black and gray wash, heightened with traces of white gouache, on tan laid paper (pieced together), laid down on cream laid card

Original size

26.8 × 55.9 cm (10 9/16 × 22 1/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Baroque

Moses Striking the Rock captures one of the Old Testament's most dramatic interventions — the moment water flows from stone at the touch of a staff — rendered here by François Verdier with the sweeping authority of the French Grand Manner. Verdier trained under Charles Le Brun at the height of Louis XIV's cultural ambitions, absorbing the Academy's taste for monumental figure groupings and rhetorical gesture. This preparatory drawing reveals his working method in rare detail: layers of black ink, crayon, and wash build atmosphere and shadow, while traces of white gouache lift the composition's key figures into light. The result has the tonal richness of a grisaille painting rather than a simple sketch. Verdier was a full member of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, elected in 1678, and contributed designs to several of the major decorative programmes of his era — making works like this an intimate window into how large-scale religious compositions were conceived before they reached the wall. The hand-painted oil reproduction translates Verdier's careful orchestration of light and crowd into the depth and warmth that only oil on canvas can sustain, giving the scene a physical presence the original drawing — precise and beautiful as it is — was never intended to carry alone.