This crowded and fantastic composition contains a drama in five acts describing incidents in the life of Joseph in Egypt (see Genesis xlvii. 1-6, 13-26; xlviii. 1-14). (1) On the left Pharaoh, in a white turban, and surrounded by attendants, is met by Joseph and his brethren, who stand before him in attitudes of supplication. The youth sitting on the steps with a basket in his hand is a portrait (Vasari tells us) of the painter's pupil, Bronzino. (2) On the right of the foreground Joseph, seated on a triumphal car drawn by naked children, stoops forward towards a man who kneels and presents a petition. (3) In the middle distance there is an animated group of men ("Wherefore shall we die before thine eyes, both we and our land?"). (4) On the steps leading up to the circular building on the right, Joseph is leading one of his sons to see the dying Jacob; he is followed by the "steward of the house," a conspicuous figure in a long crimson robe. The other boy appears at the top of the steps and is embraced by his mother. (5) Inside the room Jacob is represented as giving his blessing to the two boys, Ephraim and Manasseh, who are presented to him by their father. The antique statues which adorn the building were often given by mediæval artists as characteristic of Egypt, from which the art of Greece was believed to have been derived (see Richter's Italian Art in the National Gallery, pp. 36-40).
The removal of this picture has been blasted by a woman's curse. It was painted for a Florentine noble, named Borgherini; and when he was exiled, the civic authorities sent to his house to buy up all its works of art, which were to be sent as a present to the King of France. But Borgherini's wife received the official with "reproaches of intolerable bitterness," says Vasari, "such as had never before been hurled at living man: 'How then! Dost thou, vile broker of frippery, miserable huckster of twopences, dost thou presume to come hither with intent to lay thy fingers on the ornaments which belong to the chambers of gentlemen? despoiling, as thou hast long done, and as thou art for ever doing, this our city of her fairest ornaments to embellish strange lands therewith? Depart from this house, thou and thy myrmidons.'" The lady's anger preserved the picture—only to be afterwards seduced away, by English gold, into the Duke of Hamilton's Collection, from which it was bought for the National Gallery in 1882. Borgherini's commission for the works in question is thus described by Vasari:—
"It chanced that Pier Francesco Borgherini had at that time caused rich carvings in wood to be executed by Baccio d' Agnolo for the decoration of coffers, backs of chairs, seats of different forms, with a bedstead in walnut wood, all of great beauty, and intended for the furnishing forth of an apartment. He therefore desired that the paintings thereof should be equal to the rest of the ornaments. To that end he commissioned Andrea del Sarto to paint the history of Joseph in figures of no great size, and these our artist was to execute in competition with other artists,"—Ubertino and Pontormo among the number (Vasari, iii. 201, iv. 353).
Ubertino's paintings for this sumptuous bedroom as well as that of Pontormo have now found their way into our Gallery (see 1218, 1219).
1132. THE VESTIBULE OF A LIBRARY.
Hendrick Steenwyck, the younger (Flemish: 1580-1649).
The elder painter of this name was one of the first to give us those architectural interiors, which later became a specialty among various painters (see Havard's Dutch School, p. 53). His son, the younger Steenwyck, adopted the same line of art. He came to London before 1629, and was much employed in supplying architectural backgrounds to the royal portraits by Van Dyck and to other pictures. He died in London after 1649.
A picture for architects to look at. It is the interior of a vestibule giving access to a library, and is full of inventiveness. Notice, too, how beautifully the accessories—the tablecloth, the vase of flowers, etc., are painted.
1133. THE NATIVITY.
Luca Signorelli (Cortona: 1441-1523). See 1128.