MOUNT SINAI / JABAL MUSA PAINTED BY JAN ASSELIJN

Jan Asselijn (c.1610 – October 1, 1652)
Mount Sinaï / Jabal Musa (2,285 m - 7,496ft)
Egypt

In Flight into Egypt, c. 1640, oil on canvas, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

 

About the painting 

Flight into Egypt used to be a very popular subject. Hundreds of canvas were painted on this subject between the 14th and 19th centuries, showing Mary with the baby on a donkey, led by Joseph, borrowing older iconography from the rare Byzantine journey to Bethlehem. Nevertheless, Joseph sometimes holds the child on his shoulders. Prior to about 1525, it was generally part of a larger cycle, whether it was the Nativity, the Life of Christ, or the Life of the Virgin. The background of these scenes generally (until the Council of Trent tightened up on such additions to the Scriptures) included a number of apocryphal miracles and provided an opportunity for the emerging genre of landscape painting.  The mountain deputed is supposed to be Mount Sinaï,  each painter giving his own vision of the sacred mountain or taking inspiration from what had already been painted in the past. The painted mountain  has generally very little to do with what Mount Sinaï really is.

The mountain
Mount Sinaï (2,285 m - 7,496 ft) or Jabal Mūsā or Gabal Mūsā (in arab : "Moses' Mountain" or "Mount Moses"), also known as Mount Horeb or Jebel Musa (a similarly named mountain in Morocco), is a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt that is a possible location of the biblical Mount Sinai. The latter is mentioned many times in the Book of Exodus (and other books of the Bible) and the Quran. According to Jewish, Christian, and Islamic tradition, the biblical Mount Sinai was the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments.
Mount Sinai is a moderately high mountain near the city of Saint Katherine in the Sinai region.
It is next to Mount Katherine (2,629 m - 8,625 ft), the highest peak in Egypt.
Mount Sinai's rocks were formed in the late stage of the Arabian-Nubian Shield's (ANS) evolution. Mount Sinai displays a ring complex that consists of alkaline granites intruded into diverse rock types, including volcanics. The granites range in composition from syenogranite to alkali feldspar granite. The volcanic rocks are alkaline to peralkaline and they are represented by subaerial flows and eruptions and subvolcanic porphyry. Generally, the nature of the exposed rocks in Mount Sinai indicates that they originated from differing depths.
There are two principal routes to the summit. The longer and shallower route, Siket El Bashait, takes about 2.5 hours on foot, though camels can be used. The steeper, more direct route (Siket Sayidna Musa) is up the 3,750 "steps of penitence" in the ravine behind the monastery.
The summit of the mountain has a mosque that is still used by Muslims. It also has a Greek Orthodox chapel, constructed in 1934 on the ruins of a 16th-century church, that is not open to the public. The chapel encloses the rock which is considered to be the source for the biblical Tablets of Stone. At the summit also is "Moses' cave", where Moses was said to have waited to receive the Ten Commandments.

The painter

Asselijn was born at Dieppe from a French Huguenot family as Jean Asselin. He received instruction from Esaias van de Velde (1587–1630), and distinguished himself particularly in landscape and animal painting, though his historical works and battle pieces are also admired. He traveled in France and Italy, and modeled his style after Bamboccio (Pieter van Laer), also a member of the Bentvueghels. Nicolaes de Helt Stockade and Asselijn married two sisters in Lyons in 1645, both daughters of Houwaart Koorman of Antwerp. According to Houbraken, he heard this story from Abraham Genoels, who in turn heard it from Laurens Frank, an artist who was staying in the Koorman household with Artus Quellinus in Lyons at the time. Their marriages brought both Asselijn and Helt-Stockade back to the Netherlands after their travels. Asselijn had a withered hand and was small of stature, which gave him the nickname in France of petit Jean Hollandois, and which gave him the nickname Krabbetje (little claw) in the Bentvueghels. He seems to have befriended Rembrandt. In the etching that Rembrandt made of him, Asselijn appears in some states to be standing before an easel. His hands are not shown. Frederick de Moucheron, another Italianate landscape painter, was his pupil. He was one of the first Dutch painters who introduced a fresh and clear manner of painting landscapes in the style of Claude Lorrain, and his example was speedily followed byer artists. Asselijn's pictures were in high estimation at Amsterdam, and several of them are in the museums of that city. Twenty-four, painted in Italy, were engraved. One of his paintings, The Threatened Swan, which portrays a swan aggressively defending its nest, became a symbol of Dutch national resistance, although it is unknown if Asselijn intended it to be so.  The painting has been dated to the 1640s. It is considered to be Asselijn's most famous work  and was the Rijksmuseum's first acquisition.

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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau