Esau claiming Isaac's blessing

An elderly, bearded Isaac sits up in a canopied bed, gesturing toward Esau who stands in the foreground in hunter's clothing. At Esau's feet lies the carcass of a hunted animal, while in the background doorway, Rebecca and Jacob are seen whispering and watching the encounter. The work is a preparatory drawing in brown wash with white highlights, featuring a grid of lines used to transfer the composition to a larger surface.

This narrative of the 'stolen blessing' was a focal point for Renaissance thinkers exploring the tension between literal and spiritual inheritance, a theme frequently addressed in Kabbalistic commentaries. It belongs to the tradition of the 'Raphael Bible' (the Vatican Loggia frescoes), which established the standard iconographic cycle for these Genesis narratives in the early modern period.