The Doubt of Joseph

The Upper Rhenish Master is a conventional attribution for several anonymous painters working in the Rhine valley region — Alsace, Basel, Constance — in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. The Doubt of Joseph depicts the moment from the apocryphal Gospels when Joseph, discovering Mary's pregnancy before the Annunciation has been explained to him, is shown in a state of troubled uncertainty — a scene that humanises the narrative by focusing on Joseph's psychological crisis. This subject was relatively unusual in altarpiece programmes and reflects the more narrative, emotionally nuanced approach to sacred history found in Upper Rhenish devotional painting.

The Upper Rhenish master works in tempera with gold ground, employing the softly modelled, lyrical figure style characteristic of the region around 1400. Joseph's posture of troubled doubt — hand to chin or averted gaze — is communicated through gesture and facial expression. The Virgin's pregnancy is shown with the discreet anatomical suggestion that late Gothic convention permitted.