The dramatic impact of Tiepolo's painting is heightened by its large size, sumptuous colouring and theatrical character. The Old Testament subject is made all the more immediate through the figures' contemporary appearance and life-like details, such as the depiction of Moses, who is shown upside down and bawling. The painting was originally even larger, but a section, showing a halberdier and a dog in a river landscape, was removed from the right, possibly in the nineteenth century (now in a private collection). Andrea Corner probably commissioned the work for his Palazzo Corner della Regina on the Grand Canal, Venice.