''Jacob's Dream'' () is a 1639 oil-on-canvas painting by the Spanish
Tenebrist painter
José de Ribera
Jusepe de Ribera (; baptised 17 February 1591 – 3 November 1652) was a Spanish painter and printmaker. Ribera, Francisco de Zurbarán, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, and the singular Diego Velázquez, are regarded as the major artists of Spani ...
(''Lo Spagnoletto'').
Description
It measures and is in the
Museo del Prado
The Museo del Prado ( ; ), officially known as Museo Nacional del Prado, is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. It houses collections of Art of Europe, European art, dating from the 12th century to the early 20th ce ...
in Madrid.
Analysis
Jacob
Jacob, later known as Israel, is a Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions. He first appears in the Torah, where he is described in the Book of Genesis as a son of Isaac and Rebecca. Accordingly, alongside his older fraternal twin brother E ...
appears as a shepherd sleeping, resting on his left shoulder with a tree behind him. In the background on the other side is
the ladder that he sees in his dream. It is not a wooden ladder but a ladder of light, by which
angel
An angel is a spiritual (without a physical body), heavenly, or supernatural being, usually humanoid with bird-like wings, often depicted as a messenger or intermediary between God (the transcendent) and humanity (the profane) in variou ...
s are ascending and descending.
References
External links
El sueño de Jacob El Prado
''Jusepe de Ribera, 1591-1652 '' Issued in connection with an exhibition held Sept. 18-Nov. 29, 1992, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (see pages: 135–137).
Paintings by Jusepe de Ribera
Angels in art
Paintings of Jacob
1639 paintings
Jacob
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