The Story of Joseph, II

Bartolomeo di Giovanni, a Florentine painter who frequently collaborated with Domenico Ghirlandaio and Botticelli, painted this Story of Joseph panel around 1487. Bartolomeo specialized in narrative predella panels and cassone paintings, and his Joseph cycle exemplifies the Florentine love of continuous narrative. The Old Testament Joseph story was popular for marriage furnishings as a model of virtue rewarded. This work belongs to the Early Renaissance, the transformative period in European art when painters first applied mathematical perspective, naturalistic figure modeling, and archaeological interest in antiquity to the inherited traditions of medieval devotional painting.

Tempera on panel in elongated narrative format with multiple episodes within a single composition. Bartolomeo's lively storytelling and detailed architectural settings reflect the Florentine decorative painting tradition.