Moses' fiery test

The Trial of Moses by Fire is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Giorgione (1500-1501).

The work is dimensionally and thematically similar to his hanging painting The Judgment of Solomon, also in the Uffizi, and dates from the years immediately following Giorgione's move to Venice.

The episode was taken from the Talmud, and was probably commissioned by an acculturated person who did not entirely follow official Roman Catholic positions.

The horizontal configuration is similar to that of Giovanni Bellini's Holy Allegory, also in the Uffizi, and allows the painter to give importance to the landscape. In the attention to detail of the latter, there are evident influences from northern European painting.

Born in Giorgione, Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco was an Italian painter of the Venetian school during the High Renaissance of Venice, who died at the age of thirty. Giorgione is known for the elusive poetic quality of his work, although only about six surviving paintings are firmly attributed to him. The uncertainty surrounding the identity and meaning of his work has made Giorgione one of the most mysterious figures in European art.

Together with Titian, who was probably slightly younger, he founded the distinctive Venetian school of Italian Renaissance painting, which achieves much of its effect through color and mood, and is traditionally contrasted with Florentine painting, which It is based on a more linear style designed by design. .