Aaron Changing the Water of the River into Blood (Exodus 7:19-21)

The support consists of three horizontally grained oak planks and is bevelled on all sides. The light-coloured ground has a warm, pink appearance from the wood support. Underdrawing is visible with the naked eye, especially in the figures. The paint layers were applied thinly, allowing the ground to show through. Numerous small pentimenti are present in the figures, most noticeably in Aaron’s head.

Fair. The join at the bottom of the picture has separated. The browns are worn and the retouchings have darkened. The blue in the sky has discoloured, possibly because of the use of smalt. The green pigment used for the sleeves of Aaron’s garment has oxidised. The varnish is yellow and matte where the painting has been retouched.

A truncated box frame¹¹De Bruyn Kops 1984, p. 54, fig. C2; De Bruyn Kops in Amsterdam 1984b, p. 100; De Bruyn Kops 1995, p. 74, fig. C2; De Bruyn Kops in Van Thiel/De Bruyn Kops 1995, p. 146.

...; from A.G. Brigg Jr, Nieuwer Amstel, fl. 600, to the museum, April 1895;²²RANH, ARS, Kop, inv. 290, p. 142, no. 1278 (20 April 1895); RANH, ARS, IS, inv. 175, no. 74 (30 April 1895, no. 1035); RANH, ARS, Kop, inv. 290, p. 159, no. 1317 (18 September 1895). on loan to the Museum Het Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam, since 1924

ObjectNumber: SK-A-1626

The ten plagues visited by God upon Egypt were not very popular subjects in 17th-century Dutch painting.⁶⁶Huiskamp 1991, p. 58. As far as is known, Jan Pynas was the first artist to depict the scene represented here, the first plague, Aaron Changing the Water of the River into Blood (Exodus 7:19-21).⁷⁷See Pigler 1974, I, p. 100. The Nile, turned to blood and with dead fish floating in it, is shown on the right of Pynas’s painting, while Moses (shown with two beams of light on his head in accordance with the translation of Exodus 34:29 in the Vulgate) and Aaron stand with Pharoah and his entourage of servants and magicians on the left.

The elongated, horizontal format of the painting is exceptional in Pynas’s oeuvre, but the overall economy of means with which the scene has been rendered is typical of the artist.⁸⁸For a description of Jan Pynas’s style, especially in relation to that of Pieter Lastman, see Tümpel 1991a, pp. 27-33. In a number of compositions, such as the 1613 Expulsion of Hagar, Pynas placed his protagonists close to the picture plane in the left foreground with a landscape view on the right.⁹⁹Aachen, Suermondt Museum; illustrated in Tümpel 1991a, p. 30, fig. 17. The size of the figures and their limited number create a monumental effect, which is further emphasized by the rigidly vertical poses. Apart from the figures of Moses and Aaron, the gestures are restrained. With his back to the picture plane, Aaron’s pose is almost the exact counterpart of Moses’, and his right arm holding the rod continues the line of Moses’ left arm. The large planes of colour – aubergine and red – of Moses’ and Aaron’s robes further add to the monumentality of the figures, as does the simplified rendering of these garments. The long, flat folds of the drapery and angular facial features recall Elsheimer’s figure style, as in the German artist’s St Paul.¹⁰¹⁰Sussex, Petworth House (National Trust); illustrated in Andrews 1977, pl. 58.

The Italianate landscape is the most extensive in Pynas’s painted oeuvre. The hill rising up on the right, the types of building, and especially the river, remind one of Pynas’s drawing, View of the Tiber in Rome (fig. a). The sense of drama in the present painting is formed by the contrast of the heavily shaded foreground of the landscape with the bright background, where the sun is seen bursting through the clouds. Such a pronounced contrast of light and shade is already a feature of Jan Pynas’s earliest extant painting, the 1605 Raising of Lazarus.¹¹¹¹Aschaffenburg, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen; illustrated in Tümpel 1991a, p. 28, fig. 14.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 252.

Bauch 1935, pp. 148-49; Huiskamp 1991, p. 58; Huiskamp in Amsterdam 1991b, p. 232, no. 18

1903, p. 216, no. 1932; 1976, p. 459, no. A 1626; 2007, no. 252

J. Bikker, 2007, 'Jan Symonsz. Pynas, Aaron Changing the Water of the River into Blood (Exodus 7:19-21), 1610', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7445