Dream of Saint Joseph
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.An angel appears to Joseph in a dream, urging him to take Mary and Jesus and flee into Egypt. In the seventeenth century, Joseph became a paradigm of the guardian-father. Here, Valentin employs touch to enhance the physicality of the figures. One scholar has alluded to the importance of the notion of God’s grace in such a picture, to "the heavenly apparition at the very moment when, incapable of rising to the truths of the Spirit, exhausted by the effort, man falls back in his torpor."
Artwork Details
- Title: Dream of Saint Joseph
- Artist: Valentin de Boulogne (French, Coulommiers-en-Brie 1591–1632 Rome)
- Date: ca. 1624–26
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 44 7/8 × 36 1/4 in. (114 × 92 cm)
- Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: Private collection
- Curatorial Department: European Paintings