An Enigmatic 15th-Century German Bible Illustration
By James Wehn
Moses stands among twelve men armed with swords and a variety of pole arms. Wearing the iconic dress of a biblical prophet, his long robe and red cloak contrasts the fifteenth-century clothes and armor worn by the men around him. The precise meaning of this anonymous drawing in the Thrivent Financial Collection of Religious Art is unclear. The scene is probably intended to illustrate a passage from the book of Exodus in a handwritten German bible. Calligraphy on the verso (back) of the paper is a passage where Moses instructs the Hebrew people to prepare for the last of God’s plagues on Egypt and to flee into the wilderness. However, because the drawing has been removed from it’s original context within a handwritten manuscript, it is impossible to determine whether this scene appeared before or after the verso text. The question remains: what is this scene intended to illustrate?