妻に嘲笑されるヨブ

For most of its life nobody knew who painted this. It was taken for the work of some anonymous 17th-century Italian, and only in 1922 did scholars propose the name Georges de La Tour, a painter from Lorraine who had been almost entirely forgotten for nearly two centuries. A restoration in 1972 uncovered his signature and settled it. La Tour built whole pictures around a single candle flame, and here it is held by Job's wife as she leans over him. Job, in the Bible, has lost his children, his wealth and his health, and his wife stands above his wasted body urging him to curse God and be done with it. The candle throws her face into warm light and lets his ribs and gaunt legs emerge from the dark below her.