Frida Kahlo’s 1945 painting portraying Moses as a child floating in a basket is titled Moses.
The work is based on the biblical story of Moses, whose mother placed him in a basket on the Nile to save him from Pharaoh’s order that Hebrew boys be killed. Kahlo’s version expands the story into a crowded symbolic panorama.
The central infant is surrounded by religious, philosophical, historical, and natural references. Kahlo reportedly drew inspiration from Sigmund Freud’s book Moses and Monotheism, although the composition is distinctly her own visual meditation on origins and human development.
The painting is sometimes called The Birth of Moses, but Moses is the standard English title used for the work.