Isaac Blessing Jacob

Govert Flinck painted this in 1638, when he was in his early twenties and had just come out of Rembrandt's Amsterdam studio, whose warm light and broad brush he had learned to imitate closely. The scene is a moment of deception. The blind old man is Isaac, about to bless the wrong son. Jacob kneels at the bedside wearing animal-skin gloves, so his smooth arms will feel like those of his hairy brother Esau, and their mother Rebecca watches from the shadows behind the bed, since the whole scheme was hers. Flinck lets the light fall on the boy's fur and the old man's outstretched hands, the very point where the lie is being sealed.