Moses and the Messengers from Canaan

Moses and the Messengers from Canaan, painted in 1621 and now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, depicts the episode from Numbers 13 in which Moses sends twelve spies into Canaan, who return carrying a giant cluster of grapes suspended from a pole — proof of the land's fertility but accompanied by a discouraging report about its powerful inhabitants. The cluster of grapes carried between two men became one of the canonical images of the Old Testament in Western art, its visual drama and typological significance — the grapes as prefiguring the Eucharistic wine — making it a favoured subject for large-scale decorative cycles. Lanfranco's treatment, likely designed for a prominent setting given its eventual Getty provenance, would have emphasised the physical drama of the grape-carrying episode with his characteristic bold figure placement.

Oil on canvas, the subject provided Lanfranco with a naturalistic opportunity — the muscular effort of carrying the enormous bunch of grapes on a pole — that connects to the Carracci tradition of dignified physical labour. The grape cluster itself would receive careful chromatic attention as the composition's visual centrepiece.