Isaak und Jakob

Jusepe de Ribera was a Spaniard who spent his career in Naples, then ruled by the Spanish crown, and he painted this there in 1637. It catches a single tense second from the book of Genesis. The old man on the left is Isaac, blind and near death, reaching out to bless his son. He believes he is touching his elder boy Esau, a hunter covered in hair, but the young man taking the blessing is really the younger brother Jacob, who has wrapped his arm in a goat's hide to fool his father's fingers. Ribera lets a hard light rake across the bedclothes and the deceiving arm, leaving Isaac's face in the half-dark where the lie is happening.