Worship of the Golden Calf

A close friend of Nicolas Poussin, Claude Gellée (1600-1682), known due to his regional origins as "Le Lorrain" is a painter whose fame has remained undimmed over the centuries. The Kunsthalle possesses one of his religious works as well.

Across almost one-and-a-half by two-and-a-half meters, Lorrain spread an idyllic Arcadian landscape, in which the Old Testament story of the "Worship of the Golden Calf" (1653) plays out (2 Moses 32:4-6, 19). Under a gently clouded sky, the people of Israel have gathered around the idol. The golden calf stands on a column, before which fire burns on an altar. A priest gestures towards the image, while people dance around it and raise their hands in prayer. At the left, in the distance, Moses can be seen descending from the mountain of Sinai with a youthful companion. At the sight of the heathen rituals, which are depicted here on the banks of a river, the elderly Moses raises the Ten Commandments high above his head, as though to show them to the faithless and stop their behaviour. The moment is frozen just before Moses destroys the tablets in fury.

Together with Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain can be seen as having historically prepared the way for the French school of landscape painting. This movement integrated historical, mythological, or biblical scenes into atmospherically composed and illuminated natural scenery, thus producing a harmonic unity of humanity and creation. Lorrain's lasting contribution to art history, however, was his sensitive treatment of light, which defined him as one of the very early forerunners of Impressionism.

This important work, painted in 1653 on commission for the Roman Carlo Cardelli, has been in the collection of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe since 1959. In it, the artist positioned the worship scene, as well as the landscape in the distance and the mountain of Sinai, in a gently fading evening light. In this moment, a dark hour for Moses, he is portrayed wandering lonely in the shade of the high trees.