Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary and foster father to Jesus, Joseph was, according to the New Testament, betrothed to Mary at the time of the Annunciation. Although descended from David, the king of the Jews, he was poor and a carpenter by trade. St. Matthew’s Gospel describes him as a just man and records how his initial distress at Mary’s pregnancy was dispelled by an angelic vision; and it tells of how, after a warning in a dream, he took his family to Egypt to escape Herod’s persecution. After the king’s death, and again in response to a dream, Joseph returned to Israel. Here, fearing Herod’s son, Archelaus, who reigned in Judea, he settled in Nazareth in Galilee.

His last appearance in the New Testament is when he and Mary, on their way back from celebrating the Passover at Jerusalem, are forced to return to the city to find the 12-year-old Jesus who was preaching in the Temple. Most authorities believe that Joseph was dead by the time of the Crucifixion.

In art he is generally depicted as old, but this tradition rests on apocryphal sources; he was more likely to have been a young man at the time of the Nativity. His steadfastness as a guardian and husband is the basis for his patronage of fathers of families.

As a child Jesus would have learned carpentry from his foster father.

Here Joseph is shown at work - an everyday scene except for the watching angels and the lily, a symbol of chastity, that is in bloom behind Jesus.