The story
For nearly a century the most famous painting in Épinal had no author. Job Mocked by His Wife shows the ruined Job seated in the dark while his wife, a candle in her hand, stands over him. It came to the museum in 1829 as a gift from the Duke of Choiseul-Stainville, president of the Vosges departmental council, and through the 19th century it was taken for the work of an anonymous Italian follower of Caravaggio. In 1922, after the German scholar Hermann Voss had rediscovered Georges de La Tour, the Lorraine painter of candlelit night scenes, the Louvre curator Louis Demonts proposed his name. Proof came only in 1972, when restorers found La Tour's signature in the lower right corner.
The museum itself was created in 1822, when the department decided to show the confiscated collection of the princes of Salm, and it opened in 1828. It stands on an island between two arms of the Moselle, in a building remodelled in 1992 with bold, stacked volumes and a long glass roof that brings in daylight. Near the La Tour hangs a late Rembrandt, an elderly woman holding a rosary, painted around 1661. The collection runs from Gallo-Roman finds from the ancient site of Grand, in the Vosges, to contemporary art.
During 2026 Job Mocked by His Wife is on deposit at the Georges de La Tour museum in Vic-sur-Seille, in neighbouring Moselle, so it is worth checking where it hangs before a visit.
