Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph

The old blind man is Jacob, and he has just crossed his arms. Joseph, at the right, is trying to correct him, because the stronger right-hand blessing is landing on the younger grandson instead of the elder. Guercino painted this scene around 1620 for a cardinal at Ferrara, pushing the figures close to us in hard light and deep shadow in a way that still remembers Caravaggio. Velázquez saw it on his Italian travels in 1629. Centuries later the scholar Denis Mahon found it in Paris and bought it in 1934 for £120, roughly the cost of a small car then, and it later came to the National Gallery of Ireland.