Biblical Scene - Moses in the reeds

Moses in the reeds — the infant hidden by his mother Jochebed in a basket of bulrushes on the Nile to protect him from Pharaoh's decree killing Hebrew male children — is among the Old Testament's most tender scenes. Watanabe's katazome rendering of this moment of desperate maternal ingenuity would place the basket among the bold-formed reeds of his characteristic palette, the river and its vegetation given the same flat, rich color as the human figures. The print captures a moment in which the most ordinary materials — basket, river, rushes — become vessels of divine protection.