Moses Saved from the Water, Notre-Dame de la Nativité Cathedral, Vence

The wall mosaic Chagall created for Notre Dame de la Nativité cathedral in Vence in 1979 attests to his deep feelings for the town where he lived from 1949 to 1966. The City of Vence and the parish priest, Father Munier, through his friend Louis Trotabas¹, a local resident and dean of the Nice School of Law and Economics from 1962 to 1968, commissioned the work. Trotabas had already been involved in commissioning the law school’s Message of Ulysses mosaic 11 years earlier². Entitled Moses Saved from the Water, it was the last mosaic made during Chagall's lifetime. He was 92.

Built in the 11^th century on ancient ruins, Notre Dame de la Nativité rises in the heart of Vence on the high plateau of the Pre-Alps, drenched in Mediterranean sunlight. It has undergone many changes over the centuries³. The mosaic is set within an 18^th-century gypsum frame in the baptismal chapel. The frame, which features two columns surmounted by a classical pediment, was probably originally designed to hold a large, now-lost painting. It bears the crest of Monsignor Godeau, Bishop of Vence from 1638 to 1672⁴, who had many works carried out in the cathedral.

The mosaic is one of several monumental works Chagall designed for religious buildings. It carries on an artistic process that began with the Biblical Message cycle and continued through to the Angels’ Meal mosaic he made for Saint Roseline’s chapel in Les Arcs-sur-Argens four years earlier⁵. The Vence cathedral mosaic is based on a story in the Book of Exodus on the Old Testament — the rescue of Moses from the waters⁶.

Against a background of light marble tesserae in a bright palette dotted by splashes of color, Pharoah’s daughter is on the right finding the newborn in the Nile River. Accompanied by two servants, she reaches out towards the infant, who is lying in a basket in the center of the composition. The vegetation’s shimmering colors and the Nile’s glistening waters echo the women’s rich fabrics. In the background, a large sun above the outline of a pyramid sets the scene in ancient Egypt.

Moses is an emblematic figure in Chagall's work. By delivering the Hebrew people from bondage in Egypt and leading them to the Promised Land, he represents a universal message of hope and freedom. Chagall introduces evocative element into the mosaic — an angel and a rainbow, both symbols of the divine covenant, dominate the scene. The angel, a heavenly messenger, intercedes between God and man, bearing the promise that Moses will have a glorious future. The rainbow, a recurring motif in Chagall's biblical works⁷, can be interpreted as a celestial bridge, a link between the divine and human worlds. The mosaic’s preparatory drawing that Chagall made for the cathedral is clearly based on two of his earlier depictions of the story. Chagall’s first interpretation of Moses being rescued from the Nile was one of the Bible gouaches he made for art dealer Ambroise Vollard in 1931. Later, in 1965 and 1966, he went back to the theme in a gouache for the illustrated book Exodus. Both works differ from the Vence mosaic in their very subdued treatment of the scene, which focuses solely on the story’s main characters without the rainbow or angel.

For the baptistery, Chagall interpreted the event as a prophecy of the Christian sacrament of baptism as revealed in the New Testament. The theme echoes the fundamental principle of baptism, by which newcomers are welcomed into the Christian faith. Chagall had already created a monumental work for a baptistery. At the request of Father Marie-Alain Couturier and Abbé Jean Devémy, in 1956 he designed a huge composition with 90 ceramic tiles for the baptismal chapel of Notre Dame de Toute Grâce church in Plateau-d'Assy⁸. This was his first project for a house of worship. He chose to depict a story from the life of Moses, the crossing of the Red Sea, which is also in the Book of Exodus. For Chagall, both episodes foreshadowed the sacrament of baptism and possess a dual meaning, both Jewish and Christian. Thus, while remaining true to his Jewish faith, Chagall endowed the work with an ecumenical message of dialogue between religions.
For Moses Saved from the Water, he called on Michel Tharin, a close collaborator of Lino Melano’s since 1971 and his only mosaicist from 1973 on⁹. The work took place in August and September 1979¹⁰. Faithful to the Ravenna tradition, Tharin composed the mosaic by alternating marble and glass paste tesserae, which he set into the wet mortar at different angles. This allowed him to play with the reflections of light, as the members of the Gruppo Mosaicisti did. However, Moses Saved from the Water differs from Chagall's earlier mosaics in that he chose brown camaïeu contours rather than black. It is the only example where the tesserae’s square regularity yields a striking contrast between their large size and the work’s small format.

Moses Saved from the Water was unveiled on December 16, 1979 with Chagall and Tharin in attendance. His friends Trotabas and André Verdet were also there. Many prominent local figures also attended the event: clergymen including Father Munier, and political leaders, including the deputy mayor of Cagnes-sur-Mer, Suzanne Sauvaigo; Senator Francis Palmero; and the mayor of Vence, Jean Maret¹¹. The mosaic’s presentation to the public was accompanied by an exhibition in the cathedral of 31 prints chosen from among the 105 Chagall had made to illustrate the Bible published by Tériade in 1956.