Appearance of Angel to St. Joseph, also called The Song of St. Joseph

The angel who works during sleep

Matthew gives Joseph his instructions three times, always in a dream, always through an unnamed angel of the Lord. It is the one angelic office in the gospels that requires its recipient to be unconscious, and that condition sets it apart from the annunciation to Mary, where the exchange is waking and the messenger is named as Gabriel. This title records the appearance without assigning a rank, which is faithful to the source.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1640 and gives Georges de la Tour, a French painter, with Tenebrism as the style term. No dimensions are recorded. The measured colour family is red. No location is recorded.

A second title in the record

The catalogue preserves an alternative title for this entry alongside the first, and the two describe different things — one an appearance, the other a song. Recording both, rather than choosing, is the correct behaviour for a catalogue that has no archival evidence for either. The style term on file is Tenebrism, which names a way of building an image out of darkness with light admitted narrowly. Neither dimensions nor a location is recorded here.