Stories of Joseph: The Arrest of Simeon

The first time Joseph's brothers came down to Egypt to buy grain, they did not recognise the powerful official in front of them as the boy they had sold. Joseph accused them of spying and kept one of them, Simeon, as a hostage until they came back with their youngest brother. Bachiacca paints the moment Simeon is taken away. He is the man in pink under the wide straw hat, hemmed in by guards in the tight hose, puffed sleeves and red cap of the painter's own Florence. At the right, beneath a barred window, a figure is ducking through a low opening into the cell. In 1650 a guidebook to the Borghese collection called this panel a Raphael. Later inventories moved it to Giulio Romano, then to Orazio Gentileschi, until the connoisseur Giovanni Morelli recognised Bachiacca's hand in the 19th century.