Joseph presents his father and brothers to the Pharaoh

Around 1515 a wealthy Florentine merchant named Pierfrancesco Borgherini married Margherita Acciaiuoli, and his father set out to give the couple the most talked-about bedroom in the city. He hired the best young painters in Florence at once, Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo, Bacchiacca and Granacci, and had them fill the walls, the marriage bed and the storage chests with scenes from the life of Joseph. This panel is Granacci's. It shows the end of the story, the moment when Joseph, now the second most powerful man in Egypt, brings his aged father Jacob and the brothers who once sold him into slavery before the Pharaoh. Joseph was chosen for a newlyweds' room as a model of loyalty and forgiveness in a family torn apart. When the cycle was later broken up, panels like this one scattered across Europe.