Scripture · Matthew 4:21-22
Matthew 1:20-21
The Dream of Saint Joseph
But after he had pondered these things, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to embrace Mary as your wife, for the One conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a Son, and you are to give Him the name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins.”
The angel has no wings. A young figure reaches toward an old man asleep over his reading, and for years the Nantes title described only a girl waking a sleeping man.
About the artwork
Nantes owned the signed picture from 1810 but assigned it in its 1854 catalogue to Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, the eighteenth-century pastel portraitist. In 1915 Hermann Voss recognized its religious subject and helped reconnect it with Georges de La Tour. The older title named neither Joseph nor an angel.
The painting does not identify which of Joseph’s several dreams in Matthew is shown. Its still room and reaching figure can accommodate the first annunciation, the warning to flee, or another command. The pairing here chooses the first dream about Mary’s child and keeps that choice explicit.
Featured in: Georges de La Tour’s Bible Paintings: The Candle Painter Hidden Under Other Names
What does Matthew 1:20-21 mean?
Matthew 1:20–21 follows Joseph’s decision to divorce Mary quietly after learning of her pregnancy. The angel tells him not to fear taking her as his wife, identifies the child’s conception with the Holy Spirit, and gives the name Jesus with its saving purpose.
This first dream changes Joseph’s understanding of a situation he has already considered. The painting concentrates on the moment before his response: sleep, a messenger and an approaching hand. Its quietness should not hide the scale of the decision the paired passage asks him to make.
Matthew 1:20–21 provides one clearly identified reading of Joseph’s dream, while the painting leaves the particular dream unspecified.
Sources
Image source and rights declaration.
Matthew 1 — Berean Standard Bible. The paired text read with its surrounding chapter.
Georges de La Tour’s Bible Paintings: The Candle Painter Hidden Under Other Names. Exact-work research, history and interpretive qualifications for this reading.
Les Peintres de la réalité en France au XVIIe siècle (1934). Historical catalogue, used with the owning institution’s current attribution and dating.
Also from Matthew:Marriage of the VirginThe Three Kings See the Star
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