I Am Your Brother, Joseph

+Attributed to Andrea Schavone, Joseph Judging His Brothers
Italian,  16th Century
Chambery, Musee des Beaux-Arts

This year the daily Mass readings for July 9th and 10th tell the Old Testament story of Joseph, he who was sold into slavery by his brothers, became a high ranking Egyptian official and eventually became reconciled to his family when they came to beg for food during a famine in Palestine. The climactic moment comes in the passages which form the reading for Thursday when, after testing them in previous passages, Joseph reveals his identity and tells his brothers

"I am your brother Joseph, whom you once sold into Egypt.
But now do not be distressed, and do not reproach yourselves for having sold me here. It was really for the sake of saving lives that God sent me here ahead of you.
For two years now the famine has been in the land, and for five more years tillage will yield no harvest.
God, therefore, sent me on ahead of you to ensure for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives in an extraordinary deliverance.
So it was not really you but God who had me come here; and he has made of me a father to Pharaoh, lord of all his household, and ruler over the whole land of Egypt.” (Genesis 45:5-8)


The story of Joseph is, of course, a familiar one. But, rather surprisingly, there are not as many depictions of the climactic scene in art as there are for the earlier episodes of his betrayal by his brothers, who sold him into slavery, and his rise in Egyptian society. Many focus on the incident in which he had to repulse the romantic advances of the wife of the Egyptian official Potiphar (Genesis 39). This is probably no surprise because tales of spicy advances have always been highly favored, and the reversal of usual roles in the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife makes for a nice variation on the usual formula.

While looking for images to illustrate the readings about Joseph and his reunion with his repentant family I couldn’t help but notice that, in addition to demonstrating, by their small numbers, that “sex sells” over family reconciliation, the images of Joseph and his brothers also illustrate an interesting development in western European art.

Images of Joseph as the high Egyptian official and in his meeting with his brothers seem to cluster in the later history of European art. And, within that cluster there is a difference between images made before 1800 and those made after 1800.

Images Before 1800

The earlier images tell a reasonably straightforward story, based on the biblical account.  They make little effort to set the incident in any particular time period or place.  The images are so lacking in special decorative motifs that they could even conceivably be read as records of recent history.

+Joseph Recognized By His Brothers
From the Psalter of St. Louis
Franch (Paris), c. 1270
Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France
MS Latin 10525, fol. 25v

* Joseph Forgiving His Brothers
From a Bible historiee
English, c. Late 13th-Mid 14th Century
Manchester, The John Rylands Library
MS French 5, fol. 39v

* Joseph Revealing Himself to His Brothers
From an Ancient History
Latin Kingdom (Acre), Last Quarter of the 13th Century
Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France
MS Francais 20125, fol. 70r

+ Master of the Roman de Fauvel, Joseph Revealing Himself to His Brothers
From a Bible historiale byr Guiard des Moulins
French (Paris), c.1325-1350
Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France
MS Francais 156, fol. 40r

* Master of the Roman de Fauvel, Joseph Revealing Himself to His Brothers
From a Speculum historiale by Vincent of Beauvais
French (Paris), c. 1333-1334
Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France
MS Francais 316, fol. 75v

* Anonymous, Joseph Reveals Himself to His Brothers
From a Histoires bibliques
French (Saint-Quentin), c. 1350
Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France
MS Francais 1753, fol. 24r

* Stefano di Alberto Azzi, Joseph Meeting His Brothers
From an Ancient History
Italian (Bologna), c. 1353-1359
Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France
MS Francais 168, fol. 68r

* Master of the Livre du Sacre and Workshop, Joseph Meeting His Brothers
From a Speculum historiale by Vincent of Beauvais
French (Paris), c. 1370-1380
Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France
MS NAF 15939, fol. 43r

The image of Egypt in Renaissance and Baroque works is of a fantasy land.  The settings and costumes of the characters are neither clothing contemporary with the painter nor based on any historical model. They suggest a theatrical vision of the “East”.

Between 1515 and 1517 the painters Bacchiacca and Pontormo were commissioned to paint the story of Joseph on the walls of a room within a Florentine palace that were being decorated as a wedding gift for the owner and his new bride.  Three of the paintings illustrated this last episode in the life of Joseph.  All the paintings are now in the National Gallery in London.

* Bacchiacca (Francesco d'Ubertino), Joseph Receives His Brothers
Italian, c. 1515
London, National Gallery

* Bacchiacca (Francesco d'Ubertino), Joseph Pardons His Brothers
Italian, c. 1515
London, National Gallery

+ Jacopo Pontormo, Joseph in Egypt
Italian, c. 1516
London, National Gallery

* Workshop of Antoine Conrade after a Woodcut by Bernard Salomon, Joseph Forgives His Brothers
French, c. 1630-1645
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Giovanni Battista Gaulli (Baciccio), Joseph Recognized By His Brothers
Italian, c.1680
Ajaccio, Palais Flesch, Musee des Beaux-Arts

Antoine Coypel, Joseph Recognized By His Brothers
French, c. 1730-1731
Paris, Mobilier Nationale

* Franz Anton Maulbertsch, Joseph and His Brothers
Austrian, c. 1745-1750
Budapest, Szépmûvészeti Múzeum

* Peter Cornelius, The Recognition of Joseph by His Brothers
German, c. 1816-1817
Berlin, Nationalgalerie

Similar costuming could have applied to stories from Rome or Persia (with turbans). There is nothing very specifically Egyptian about them. In light of the fact that Egyptian antiquities were relatively well known in Europe between the fall of the Roman Empire and about 1800 (think of the obelisks in Rome, for instance) this is a bit puzzling.  The evidence was there, it just wasn't being used.

Images After 1800

The visual image changes that occur after 1800, as exemplified by the undated painting of Joseph Recognized By His Brothers by Francois Gerard, are striking.

Francois Gerard, Joseph Recognized By His Brothers
French, c. 1800
Angers, Musee des Beaux-Arts

Gerard is best known as the painter of the courts of Napoleon I and his Bourbon successors, Louis XVIII and Charles X. His career spans the first half of the 19th century. His Joseph inhabits a world with definite Egyptian details. There are sphinxes on the arms of his chair and above his head on the terrace of a building. He himself wears a nemes headdress. The difference, as they say, is in the details. But what has made the change? In a single word, Napoleon.

In July 1798 then-General Napoleon Bonaparte, at the orders of the Directory then running France following the disastrous years of the Revolution and the Reign of Terror, led a French army across the Mediterranean to land at Alexandria. The intent of the mission was to damage Britain by cutting into her trade routes through the ports of Palestine and the Levant. (The Suez Canal did not exist at this time, remember.) France simultaneously attempted to tie the British down in their home islands by sending an invasion force to Ireland (as part of the ill-fated 1798 rebellion there). All went well at first for Bonaparte. He won several battles over the Mamluk warriors who then held Egypt and took control of the country. He also conquered parts of Palestine. 

Antoine-Jean Gros, Battle of the Pyramids
French, 1810
 Versailles, Chateau

With the French army came scholars whose original intent had been to bring the Egyptians up to date with the Revolution, much as the French army had done in European countries that it had conquered in the years since 1789. However, these scholars soon fell under the spell of the older Egyptian civilization whose relics they saw all around them. Archaeology was then in its infancy, having begun more or less in earnest with the discovery of Pompeii in the late 18th century.  It is they who began the study of ancient Egypt that resulted in the development of Egyptian archaeology. There were also artists among them who set to work sketching and painting the sights that they saw.

In August 1798 the French navy was virtually destroyed by Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson at the Battle of the Nile and the French army was thereby cut off from both resupply and wholesale evacuation from Egypt. Although continuing to function well for another year, it was eventually evident that they could not hope to keep control of the country for very long. So, as he would do again in 1812 in Russia, Napoleon decided to cut his own loses and publicize his victories in advance of eventual defeat.  He quietly slipped out of Egypt back to France. He returned to a France in crisis. The Directory was near collapse and a coup was planned against it. His position as Victor over Egypt gave him brilliant notoriety and shortly after his return he became the leading member of the Consulate that replaced the deposed Directory. By the end of the year he was First Consul. He went on from there to become First Consul for Life and, finally, Emperor.

As for the French army and French scholars left behind in Egypt–their fate was less glorious.  Without adequate resupply the army's ability to continue to hold Egypt diminished dramatically and Egypt was captured by the British in 1801. At that time many of the discoveries made by the scholars fell into the hands of the British, including the famous Rosetta Stone.

The Rosetta Stone
Egyptian, 196 BC
London, British Museum

This stele with its text written in ancient hieroglyphs, in demotic Egyptian and in ancient Greek became the key to the problem of deciphering the hieroglyphs and is today in the British Museum, not the Louvre.


However, the information that did come back to France with the scholars and artists set off a craze for all things Egyptian and before long there were Egyptian tea services, Egyptian chairs, sphinx ornamented furniture, Egyptian themed jewelry.  Frequently, items of Egyptomania sat side by side in the homes of the fashionable with equally important Roman Revival objects.

Charles Percier, Egyptian caryatid and design for decorative panel
French, c.1800
Paris, Musee du Louvre, Departement des Arts graphiques

The fact that most of the artifacts found by Napoleon's scholars went to Britain set off a wave of similar Egyptomania there as well. It has been part of our world ever since, ebbing and flowing as new discoveries, such as the tomb of King Tutanhkamun, come to light.

In the realm of painting the Egyptian craze set in motion the search for the exotic that marks the work of so many painters from the second quarter of the 19th century onward. Painters were no longer content to merely imagine exotic locales. They went there to sketch. Examples abound in later 19th-century painting.

The Swiss-born Gleyre, the teacher of many of the major Impressionists, produced images such as the Egyptian Temple of 1840.

Charles Gleyre, Egyptian Temple
Swiss, 1840
Lausanne, Musee Cantonale des Beaux-Arts

Jean-Leon Gerome went to Egypt in 1856 and, from his experiences there produced Napoleon Before the Sphinx.

Jean-Leon Gerome, Napoleon Before the Sphinx
French, 1867
San Simeon, CA, Hearst Castle

The story of Joseph also received more realistic treatment. By the last decades of the 19th century paintings of his story are set in a recognizably ancient Egypt.

Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Joseph, Overseer of the Pharoah's Granaries
English, 1874
Private Collection

Such pictures as Joseph, Overseer of the Pharaoh's Granaries by the Dutch-British artist, Lawrence Alma-Tadema,


and Joseph Reveals Himself to His Brothers by the Franco-British, James Tissot, inhabit an entirely different world from the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque images.

+ James Tissot, Joseph Reveals Himself to His Brothers
French, c. 1896-1902
New  York, The Jewish Museum

© M. Duffy, 2011-2016.  

Selected images refreshed and additional images added, 2025.

+ Indicates a refreshed image

* Indicates a new image

Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity

Although it's somewhat outside the subjects I usually comment on, I thought I might mention the special exhibition now underway at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Called "Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity" it is a sumptuous and fascinatingly frothy concoction of paintings and clothing from the last four decades of the 19th century.

Beginning with the 1860s we are treated to gallery walls lavishly arrayed with paintings of beautifully dressed women (and a few men), from the brushes of the founders of Impressionism and other selected contemporary painters, of the fashionable people of Paris in particular.  On the floors of the same galleries are samples of clothing similar to or, in a few amazing cases, the actual clothing worn by the sitters.

Claude Monet, Madame Louis Joachim Gaudibert
French, 1868
Paris, Musee d'Orsay


Exhibited nearby is a virtually identical dress and shawl.

Day Dress of Grey Silk Faille and Indian Multicolored Wool Shawl
French, c. 1866-1867
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art
www.metmuseum.org

I think that it is the latter instances that are the most poignant. 

One pairing in particular stands out in my mind.  It is a painting called "In the Conservatory" by the French painter, Paul Albert Bartholome in 1881.  In the painting the artist's wife stands in the doorway, framed by the light from outdoors.  She wears a gown of purple and white that mixes polka dots, stripes and solids. 

Albert Bartholome, In the Conservatory
French, 1881
Paris, Musee d'Orsay

 In front of it stands the very gown, in almost pristine condition, its white still white and its purple still seemingly unfaded. 

Cotton dress worn by Mme. Bartholome
French, 1880
Paris, Musee d'Orsay

Gallery View showing the painting and the original dress.

What struck me particularly as I looked from one to the other was the nearly impossible size of the waist and the painful thought of how difficult it must have been for this young woman squeezed into it to take a deep breath or to engage in any activity more robust than a sedate walk.  Not even a child above the age of 6 could have so small a waist!  Seeing this, it is not difficult to believe stories of deformed rib cases and displaced organs among women of this era.  It is not too surprising then, to read elsewhere that this young woman died only six years after this picture was painted.

Not every dress in the show demonstrates such tight lacing but they do show, in various ways, some restructuring or exaggerated outline of the body:  impossible bust lines, and the rather absurd bustle, for instance.  They remind me of something my mother told about a woman who was an acquaintance of her own parents when she was a child.  This woman clung to the old style of dress and was wearing long skirted, corseted clothing into the 1920s.  My mother said that her bustline resembled a table top.  And, viewing these "modern" fashions at the Met I can see exactly what she meant!

Some examples of the means by which these unusual effects were achieved are also on display.  One gallery includes a display of three corsets, showing varying degrees of cinch in the waist, but all cutting in pretty deeply.  Surely our foremothers must have hurt from wearing these contraptions and been very glad to unhook them at the end of a day!

Still, much of the fashion on display is beautiful, either for its fabric or for its workmanship, or for both.  A favorite of mine is among the last items in the show, a beautiful, bustled, navy blue silk faille and velvet day dress of American design and workmanship from the late 1880s. 

The dress described above is the dress on the right in this gallery view.

In spite of the rather ludicrous bustle shape of its back, this dress manages to suggest the air of an efficient and decorously outgoing personality.  One wonders for whom it was made. 

An interesting issue taken up by the show is the effect of mass production and the emergence of the department store on the world of fashion and the reflections this cast in the arts.  One instance is the 1874 painting by James Tissot (whose Biblical illustrations have often been seen in this blog) called "The Ball on Shipboard". 

Tissot, who initially made his name with paintings in the popularly Romantic style of medievalism, had, in the 1860s emphatically embraced painting modern life, especially fashionable modern life.  Although never an Impressionist, he shares many of his themes with them, but was far more acceptable to contemporary taste and, therefore, more financially successful.  Until 1884 he continued to paint these fashionable, meticulously rendered works for wealthy patrons.  His reversion to Catholicism and the lifework of his two Biblical series came after 1884. 

In "The Ball on Shipboard" Tissot shows, presumably with tongue in cheek, the effects of mass produced fashion on a social climbing crowd.  Set on a yacht off the Isle of Wight during the Cowes Week Regatta, the company includes two women, placed full center, each wearing identical, nautically inspired white outfits with black trimmings.  To their right another young woman climbs the stairs.  She is attired in an outfit of pink with maroon trim, and even sports a matching bonnet.  However, her fashion statement is not unique, as two others identical to her can be seen in the crowd standing on the far side of the railing that surrounds the stairs.  In the left background, several young women appear to be wearing the same frothy gowns in different pastel colors.

James Tissot, The Ball on Shipboard
French, 1874
London, Tate Britain

It is truly a privilege to be able to compare the paintings, such as the Met's own beloved Renoir "Mme. Georges Charpentier and Her Children", with the actual (or closely related) garments that appear in them. 

Auguste Renoir, Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children
French, 1878
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art
www.metmuseum.org

This comparison reminds us that some things don't change, such as favoring black for evening wear.  It's also interesting to contemplate the lengths to which people, especially women, will go to appear fashionable.  We may decry the idiocy of the tight-laced corset or the idea of wearing a skirt covering a metal hoop skirt or a bustle frame, but we see the same dynamic at work today in items such as the ultra high heels currently fashionable. 

The show is open until May 27th in the second floor special exhibition galleries.  You can learn more on the web at:  http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2013/impressionism-fashion-modernity

Illustrating Miracles: The Hole in the Roof

Master of the Registrum Gregorii, Jesus Heals the Paralytic
From the Codex Egberti
German (Reichenau), c. 977-993.
Trier, Stadtbibliothek
MS StB Hs 24, Unknown folio

“When Jesus returned to Capernaum after some days,

it became known that he was at home.
Many gathered together so that there was no longer room for them,
not even around the door,
and he preached the word to them.
They came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men.
Unable to get near Jesus because of the crowd,
they opened up the roof above him.
After they had broken through,
they let down the mat on which the paralytic was lying.
When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic,
"Child, your sins are forgiven."
Now some of the scribes were sitting there asking themselves,
"Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming.
Who but God alone can forgive sins?"
Jesus immediately knew in his mind
what they were thinking to themselves,
so he said, "Why are you thinking such things in your hearts?
Which is easier, to say to the paralytic,
'Your sins are forgiven,'
or to say, 'Rise, pick up your mat and walk?'
But that you may know
that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on earth"
-he said to the paralytic,
"I say to you, rise, pick up your mat, and go home."
He rose, picked up his mat at once,
and went away in the sight of everyone.
They were all astounded
and glorified God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this."

Mark 2:1-12

Gospel for the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B*

When I was a small child, somewhere around age 4 or 5, my then parish church, located on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, sponsored a campaign to encourage parishioners to read the Bible. As part of that campaign, several Douay-Rheims translations of the Bible,1 in various price ranges, were made available. My parents opted for the deluxe offering, a beautiful volume, bound in leather, with gilt-edged pages and red lettering for the statements of Jesus. 2  It also came with several sections that included maps and descriptions of biblical history, explanations of the Rosary and the Mass, plus a glossary and footnotes and a section for recording important family events. For me, however, the best feature of all was the illustrations. It was elegantly illustrated with both series of biblical illustrations by James Tissot. Unbeknownst to me at the time, both series have a New York connection. The Old Testament illustrations are now in the Jewish Museum, a few blocks from my current residence; while the New Testament scenes are in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum, just across the East River.

At the time this volume entered our house I was too small to be able to read. So, like our illiterate ancestors in ages past, I looked at the pictures. They were fascinating. I knew some of the stories because I had listened at Mass to the Gospel readings (at that time the only portion of the Mass that was in English). As I learned to read, I read the captions and eventually proceeded to being able to connect the captions to the biblical passages from which they derived. Although I now own a variety of Bibles in several translations and editions, I still treasure this book and its pictures.

Among the illustrations that most fascinated me as a child was the scene described in the text of the Gospel for this Sunday. In this Gospel citizens of Capernaum bring their paralyzed family member or friend to Jesus, confident that He will heal their friend, IF they can reach Him. Blocked by the crowds surrounding Jesus, they climb onto the roof of the house where He is staying, tear a hole in it and lower their friend down into His presence. Tissot’s depiction, based on careful research gained from extended trips to the Middle East, seems very real and immediate. The strong composition, in which the downward motion of the descending paralytic, his arms spread wide, is met by the upward moving gestures of those who have risen to support him, leads down in a descending curve to the true focus of the picture, the seated Jesus, raising His arms in welcome and blessing. The picture is a dynamic, realistic product of a century of realism.

James Tissot, Healing of the Paralytic
French, c. 1886-1894
New York, Brooklyn Museum

Earlier depictions were less so. Lacking both the ability and the interest to create a realistic vision, early depictions seem to have an almost fairytale quality. For example, a mosaic of the subject, composed around the year 500 for the Arian church of Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna shows Jesus, depicted in larger-than-life-size (to underline His divine status), standing with a slightly smaller disciple, while the friends of the paralytic lower him from the roof of a building. The paralytic and his friends are represented as extremely small figures, indicating their simple human status.  Moreover, the imprecise perspective in which the building is depicted makes it difficult to tell whether the paralyzed man is being lowered to the inside of the building or to the outside.

Jesus Healing the Paralytic
Byzantine, c. 500
Ravenna, Sant' Apollinare Nuovo

A very similar scene is found in a 12th-century pictorial Bible from the Abbey of St. Bertin in France. Again we see a cut-away view of the house, in which a giant-sized Jesus sits, addressing a crowd of smaller figure. Through the hole in the roof, which resembles a chimney, two men lower the paralytic. But the two men are so nearly obscured by what appear to be towers that the overall first impression makes it seem as if the paralytic is descending from above without assistance.

Christ Healing the Paralytic
From a Pictorial Bible
France (St. Omer), c. 1190-1200
The Hague, Koninklijk Bibliotheek
MS KB 76 F 5, fol. 14r (detail)

In the mosaics decorating the cathedral of Monreale in Sicily, executed around 1200, the hole in the roof has completely disappeared and the friends appear to lower the invalid, on his bed, from the edge of the roof, almost as if the building had a Roman-style atrium.  Also of note is the fact that Jesus no longer appears to be as big as the house.  He has assumed more human dimensions.

 

Christ Healing the Paralytic
Sicilian, c. 1200
Monreale, Cathedral

This demonstrates that, although we often think of Byzantine influence as being anti-naturalistic, more abstract and symbolic, here the later Byzantine style brings a greater naturalism than we see in the nearly contemporary work from the Abbey of St. Bertin.

A later, 15th century work, the Meditationes vitae Christi, illustrated by the Master of the Harvard Hannibal, and made for King Henry V of England around 1420, places the hole in the roof, but sets the descent, somewhat illogically, outside the house. This represents a period in which the artist appears to be struggling with the correct use of perspective.

Mast of the Harvard Hannibal, Christ Healing the Paralytic
From Meditationes vitae Christ by Pseudo-Bonaventure
French (Paris), c. 1420
London, British Library
MS Royal 20 B IV, fol.v59v

By the turn of the 17th century perspective difficulties had been overcome and the indoor location of the event could be presented properly. This can be illustrated by the work of two Flemish artists, Marten de Vos and Anton Wierix, done for Catholic editions of the Bible around 1600.3   Typical of the style prevalent at the time, the compositions are crowded and somewhat difficult to read, particularly the de Vos. But it is clearly obvious that the invalid has been lowered from the opening in the roof.

Anton Wierix, Christ Healing the Paralytic
From Evangelicae historiae imagines byJerome Nadal
Flemish, c. 1593-1595
London, Trustees of the British Museum

Marten de Vos, Christ Healing the Paralytic
Flemish, c. 1600
Bolton (England), Bolton Museum

It remained for the late 19th-century painter, Tissot, to present us with a dramatic, readable and realistic image.

© M. Duffy, 2012
_______________________________
*  Excerpts from the Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States of America, second typical edition © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., Washington, DC. Used with permission. All rights reserved. No portion of this text may be reproduced by any means without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

1.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douay%E2%80%93Rheims_Bible.  For a discussion of how the Douay-Rheims translation was influential in the Authorized Version (known as the King James Bible) see Nicolson, Adam.  God's Secretaries:  The Making of the King James Bible, New York, HarperCollins, 2003.

2.  The Holy Bible, The Catholic Press, Inc., 1950.

3.  http://catholic-resources.org/Art/Nadal.htm