Zurbarán and his twelve sons

This documentary recounts the history and significance of Jacob and his twelve sons, a series of thirteen paintings completed by Francisco de Zurbarán in Seville around the year 1640. They may have been intended for the New World, although nothing is known of them until they were acquired in an auction by London merchant James Mendez seventy years later. In a compelling gesture, they were acquired by Bishop of Durham Richard Trevor in 1756, when debate around a bill on the emancipation of British Jewry was raging. He hung them in his dining room in Auckland Castle, where they remain to this day. Now, thanks to the initiative of a financier from that area, Jacob and his twelve sons have become a driver of regeneration in a community in the north of England.