Joseph the Carpenter

Georges de La Tour worked in Lorraine in the 1640s, a region worn down by war and plague, and he built almost his whole reputation on one effect: a single candle in the dark. Here an old carpenter bends over a piece of wood, boring into it with a large auger, and a small boy holds the candle for him. The man is Joseph, the boy is the child Jesus, but La Tour paints them first of all as an ordinary father and son working late. The child's hand is cupped around the flame, and the light passes right through his fingers so they seem to glow from inside. Almost nothing else is described. The tools, the shavings, the two faces come out of a warm brown darkness and everything past the candle disappears. La Tour was famous in his own lifetime, then forgotten for nearly three centuries. This painting only entered the Louvre in 1948, given in memory of the curator who had rediscovered him.