English: Yusuf (Joseph) with his father Ya'qub (Jacob) and eleven brothers, Qajar, Iran, circa 1830-1850

128 BY 91cm.

Oil on canvas, previously arch-shaped, now extended at upper corners, framed

Scenes from Biblical and Qur'anic sources, and from Persian literature, were very popular subjects for Persian artists of the later period. Of course, many stories from the Bible and Qur'an in turn became the subject of important medieval Persian poems, and thus popular in a literary as well as religious context. The transfer of these themes to a pictorial context was therefore a natural one and had been occuring for centuries.

In the case of the present work, the subject of Joseph's life appears in the Old Testament (Genesis: 37-50) and the Qur'an (Sura Yusuf: vv.1-104) and was the subject of Jami's ever-popular poem Yusuf va Zulaykha. The Biblical/Qur'anic story relates how Joseph's brothers became jealous of his status as Jacob's favourite son and cast him into a pit in the desert, where he was discovered barely alive by traders, who took him to Egypt. Once there he went through various travails and torments, whilst remaining true to his faith in God, before being elevated to a powerful position in the household of the Egyptian Pharaoh. He then brought his father and brothers to Egypt to live with him. Jami's poem concentrates on the relationship between Joseph and Potiphar's wife Zuleikha, and its mystical interpretations.

The present painting shows him as a young man in the company of his father Jacob, his ten older brothers and his one younger brother Benjamin. It is taken from the earlier part of the story when Joseph is still at home with his family and working as a shepherd. This can be deduced both from the youth of Joseph and his younger brother Benjamin, and from the fact that Jacob's beard is not yet grey (in the pendant painting to this one (lot 51) Jacob's beard is grey and he is shown as an old man).

Two closely related paintings are in the Sadabad Museum of Fine Arts, Tehran, see Keikavusi 1992, nos.14-15. For a general survey of Biblical themes in Persian painting see Milstein 1991. Other Qajar depictions of scenes from the story of Joseph can be found as follows: Falk 1972, nos.37, 40, 41, 42 (now all in the Sadabad Museum of Fine Arts, Tehran, see also Diba and Ekhtiar 1998, fig.XVI, p.194); Milstein 1991, nos.6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13; Sotheby's, New York, 10 December 1981, lot 140A.