Joseph Accused by Potiphar's Wife

Historical Context

This 1655 depiction of Joseph Accused by Potiphar's Wife, attributed to the Rembrandt Workshop, belongs to the numerous Old Testament paintings produced by the master and his circle that explored moral complexity and the psychology of false accusation. The scene — Potiphar's wife falsely accusing the virtuous Joseph of attempted seduction while Joseph maintains his innocence — was a subject rich in narrative drama: an innocent man's word against a powerful woman's, with the visual evidence of the abandoned cloak adding material complexity. Rembrandt himself painted the subject (Berlin), and this workshop version reflects sustained engagement with it in the studio. The subject had contemporary resonance in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, where legal proceedings and the fallibility of testimony were subjects of practical concern.

Technical Analysis

The composition organises the three figures — accusing wife, falsely accused Joseph, and the husband receiving the testimony — in a spatially compact arrangement lit with dramatic chiaroscuro. The emotional expressions are differentiated with the psychological attention characteristic of the Rembrandt workshop's engagement with narrative subjects.

Provenance

Gerard Hoet, Jr. [d.1760], The Hague; (his sale, by Arnoldus Franken, The Hague, 25-26 August 1760, no. 44).[1] Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky [1710-1775], Berlin; acquired in 1763 by Catherine II, empress of Russia [1729-1796], Saint Petersburg; Imperial Hermitage Gallery, Saint Petersburg; sold January 1931, as a painting by Rembrandt, through (Matthiesen Gallery, Berlin, P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., London, and M. Knoedler & Co., New York) to Andrew W. Mellon, Pittsburgh and Washington; deeded 1 May 1937 to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh;[2] gift 1937 to NGA. [1] Gerard Hoet, _Catalogus of Naamlyst van Schilderijen..._, 2 vols., The Hague, 1752, supplement by Pieter Terwesten, 1770, reprint ed. Soest, 1976, 3: 225, no. 44. The painting, which was described as a "kapitaal en uitmuntend stuk," sold for 100 florins. [2] The Mellon purchase date and the date deeded to the Mellon Trust are according to Mellon collection records in NGA curatorial files and David Finley's notebook (donated to the National Gallery of Art in 1977, now in the Gallery Archives). In 2012 The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, acquired the M. Knoedler & Co. records (accession number 2012.M.54), and in 2013 processed portions of the archive were first made publicly available. An entry from a January 1931 Knoedler sales book confirms the sale to Mellon (on-line illustration of the sales book page, in Karen Meyer-Roux, "Treasures from the Vault: Knoedler, Mellon, and an Unlikely Sale," _The Getty Iris_ [http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/author/kmeyerroux/], 30 July 2013).

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