Christ among the Doctors

Every year, Saint Luke's Gospel says, Mary and Joseph went up to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover. The year Jesus was 12, he stayed behind without their knowing, and they searched for three days before they found him in the Temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed.

Luca Giordano painted the scene between about 1660 and 1670, on a canvas almost three metres wide, and the museum points out that he gave it two centres. One is the boy, seated at the right. The other is a great column of the Temple, standing for the new faith set against the old. Around them the doctors of the law crowd in. Some listen in wonder, others argue in alarm, checking his words against the scriptures. Giordano fits the end of the story into the same picture. Far back and small, in the gap between Christ's leg and one of the doctors, Joseph and Mary are arriving, having found him at last.