Lunette: Salmon, Boaz and Obed

In the Book of Ruth, the landowner Boaz marries Ruth, a foreign widow, and in his old age they have a son, Obed, who will be the grandfather of King David. That late birth is the thin thread behind the usual reading of this lunette, and the museum itself calls the argument weak. The old man on the right is taken for Boaz, and the young mother on the left for Ruth with the baby Obed.

She sits with her eyes closed, holding her sleeping child in swaddling bands, and one breast is still bare after feeding. Later the detail was judged improper and painted over, and the recent restoration took the retouching away. The old man is a hunched profile with a white beard that juts forward. A flask hangs from his belt and a bundle or broad hat rests on his back, the kit of a pilgrim, and under the wrinkled face Michelangelo still gave him athletic legs. The top of his staff is carved into a small bearded head that looks like his own.