Biagio d’Antonio’s “The Story of Joseph” (ca 1485)

I loved this early Renaissance painting which shows, in the same frame, several incidents in the life of Joseph from the Book of Genesis. What caught my eye was the crowded landscape filled with Old Testament figures. According to the Getty Center website:

In the left-hand loggia, Jacob, seated on a throne, sends Joseph to his half-brothers tending sheep in the field. In the far left corner, the brothers, jealous of their father’s love for Joseph, strip him of his jacket and throw him into a pit. Passing merchants purchase the young boy from his brothers for twenty pieces of silver. In the background to the right, the merchants board the ship that will take them and their cargo to Egypt. In the right-hand loggia, the brothers show a blood-smeared coat to their father as evidence that Joseph is dead. With his head in his hand, Jacob mourns his son, whom he believes to be dead.

A companion panel in the Metropolitan Museum of Art depicts the next sequence of events in Joseph’s life. Originally framed next to one another, these two panels would have been inserted into the paneling of a room in a Tuscan family’s home.

There is always something picturesque and fanciful about the outdoor backgrounds in many Renaissance paintings, most particularly those by Giovanni Bellini (1430-1516). I particularly remember liking one of his paintings I saw in the Frick Collection in New York many years ago. It was called, I believe, “St. Francis in the Desert.”