The Dream of Saint Joseph

La Tour painted this around 1640 in the duchy of Lorraine, which in those years was one of the worst places in Europe to be: caught in the Thirty Years' War, its towns emptied by armies, famine and plague. You would not know it from the picture. An old man, Joseph, has fallen asleep over a book, and a young angel, painted as an ordinary child with no wings and no halo, leans in to wake him with a message. A single hidden candle does all the work, throwing the boy's hand into a warm glow and leaving the rest in deep brown shadow. La Tour built a career on these night scenes lit by one flame. The angel's raised finger is the quietest possible way to tell Joseph the family must flee into Egypt.