Jacob reproaching Laban

Jacob had worked seven years for his uncle Laban to marry Laban's younger daughter, Rachel. On the wedding night Laban sent in his elder daughter, Leah, instead, and Jacob only discovered the switch in the morning. The National Gallery reads this canvas as that morning, with the remains of the wedding meal still on the table.

Ter Brugghen splits the four figures into two pairs with a single diagonal, Jacob's shepherd's crook. Young Jacob points an accusing finger, and old Laban raises his hands. Leah sits in blue, apparently calm, and Rachel looks in from a doorway at the back. He painted it in Utrecht in 1627, signed and dated it, and took up the story again the following year, in a version now in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne.