The Gathering of Manna

Bachiacca

National Gallery of Art

About fifty pale-skinned men, women, and children along with a giraffe, ox, and other animals gather in groups across a hilly landscape in this vertical painting. The people wear robes or dresses in shades of carnation pink, honey orange, sky blue, ruby red, leaf green, or golden brown. The people’s skin is painted pearl white or, in a few instances, tinged with gray. A crowd of eight men and women gather in the lower left quadrant behind a man who points to the right with a stick. Others sit on the ground or on rocks, stand at barrel-sized urns, or bend to the ground. A porcupine, white rabbit, black bear, cow, cheetah-like animals, and several others are spaced along the foreground, close to us. The gathering continues into the distance to the right, where a path leads to a cluster of buildings along a jagged coastline. Craggy mountains rising from water line are shaded aquamarine blue under a cloudy sky. A few tall, spindly trees grow up the center of the composition, and a tall, rocky outcropping takes up most of the upper left quadrant.