St. Joseph and the Pretenders

Giovanni Francesco da Rimini's Saint Joseph and the Pretenders at the Louvre, painted around 1450, depicts the episode when Joseph's flowering rod proved him the chosen spouse of the Virgin Mary. Giovanni Francesco was a Riminese painter who combined elements of the Bolognese and Ferrarese schools Egg tempera on panel was the dominant technique of the period, demanding careful layer-by-layer construction and patient craftsmanship The work is now in the collection of Campana collection.

The scene depicts Joseph's rod blossoming while the disappointed suitors break their barren rods, rendered in the detailed narrative style characteristic of mid-fifteenth-century Emilian painting.