Joseph's brothers beg for help

This painting of Joseph's Brothers Begging for Help by Pontormo belongs to the celebrated Borgherini bedroom cycle depicting the story of Joseph, commissioned around 1515-1518 for the Florentine palazzo of Pierfrancesco Borgherini. Now in the National Gallery, London, the painting illustrates the moment when Joseph's brothers come to Egypt during famine, unknowing that the powerful official they approach is their own brother. The Borgherini Joseph cycle, to which Andrea del Sarto, Granacci, and Bacchiacca also contributed, represents one of the most important domestic painting commissions of early sixteenth-century Florence.

Pontormo's composition is characteristically inventive, packing multiple narrative moments into a shallow, compressed space filled with agitated figures. The vivid, unnatural color harmonies and the restless, angular poses of the figures create an emotional tension that transforms the biblical narrative into an intensely felt psychological drama.