36"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" 37He said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' 38This is the greatest and first commandment. 39and a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' 40On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
Matthew 22:36-40
** Alexandre Cabanel:
Cabanel's subject—Moses dying before God and his angels while seeing from afar the Promised Land that he would never enter—was a rather intimidating one for the young artist ...
For inspiration, Cabanel turned to the Renaissance artists whose works surrounded him in Rome, especially Michelangelo. The billowing drapery and muscularity of Cabanel's figure of God are clearly meant to evoke the God of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling, specifically in the Creation of Adam.
During the 1848 Revolution, students at the French Academy were forced to flee the violence in Rome and settle temporarily in Florence. There, among the treasures of the Palazzo Pitti, Cabanel would have seen Raphael's painting, The Vision of Ezekiel. The hair, face, and gesture of God in Cabanel's painting are direct references to this Renaissance work.
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17
1 Thessalonians
2:1-8
Matthew 22:34-46