Giovanni Fantoni's sculpture is located on the traditional site of Moses’s death overlooking the Promised Land. At first it appears to be a cross, but upon closer inspection we see a tubular-like serpent with a cobra head wrapped around a pole. This, however, is no ordinary pole as the artist has crafted it from small, individual tubes that extend to its base reflecting the same fluid, serpentine feel. The wings of the serpent are outstretched and emerge from the pole itself. Though separate elements, the pole and serpent are bound together as one.

In the biblical story, God commands Moses to make a saraph, or a fiery serpent, and place it on a pole (Numbers 21:8) but does not specify what material to use. The choice of bronze (or possibly copper) relates to the sounds of the Hebrew words for snake (nahash) and bronze (nehoshet). The wordplay emphasizes the connection between the material and what is crafted which also influences the name later associated with the object, Nehushtan (2 Kings 18:4).

We find a similar importance in the materials chosen by Fantoni. This is no burnished bronze, gleaming brightly in the Middle Eastern sun. Instead, it is burnt, rusted, and oxidized by the relentless elements of the desert. The russet-coloured patina evokes a sense of the physical and spiritual dryness of the wilderness wanderings and may remind us of the suffering of Christ on the cross who in the barrenness of the crucifixion proclaims, ‘I am thirsty’ (John 19:28).

The cruciform motif is Fantoni’s visual interpretation of Christ’s words in John 3:14: ‘And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up’. The artist has carefully blended the sign of the bronze serpent and the healing it symbolizes with the cross of Christ. The two symbols, cross and serpent, here brought together as one, offer a visual reminder of the unity Christians find within the whole of Scripture.