The artist has seized the moment when Jesus made this striking reply to his mother, and everything in the picture is made to turn on that. The scene is the interior of the Temple. The time is high day, for workmen are busily engaged at a stone on the outside, and a beggar is lolling at the gate in the act of asking alms. The Jewish doctors are seated. First in the line is an aged rabbi with flowing beard, and clasping a roll with his right hand. Over his eyes a film is spread, which indicates that he is blind; and so his neighbor, almost as aged as himself, is explaining to him why the boy has ceased to ask his questions, by telling him that his mother has come to claim him. Beside him, and the third in the group, is a younger man, whose face is full of eager thoughtfulness, and whose hands hold an unfolded roll, to which it appears as if he had been referring because of something which had just been said.
The other faces are less marked with seriousness, and seem to be indicative rather of curiosity; but we make little account of them because of the fascination which draws our eyes to the principal group. The face of Joseph, as Alford says, is "well-nigh faultless." It is full of thankful joy over the discovery of the boy; and though to our thinking Joseph was an older man than he is here depicted, yet everything about him is natural and manly. The Mary is hardly so successful. The narrative does not represent her as speaking softly into the ear of her son, but rather as breaking in abruptly on the assembly with her irrepressible outcry, "Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us?" and there might well have been less of the soft persuasiveness and more of the surprised look of what one might call wounded affection in her face. But the portrayal of the boy Christ is admirable. We have never, indeed, seen any representation of the face of Christ that has thoroughly satisfied us, and we do not expect ever to see one. But this one is most excellent. The "far-away" look in the eyes, and the expression of absorption on the countenance, betoken that his thoughts are intent upon that divine "business" which he came to earth to transact. Exquisite, too, as so thoroughly human, is the playing of the right hand with the strap of his girdle in his moment of abstraction. In the far future the great business of his life is beckoning him on; but close at hand his duty to his mother is asserting its immediate claim. In his eager response to the first, he cries, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" and his thoughts are after that meanwhile; but ere long the demand of the present will prevail, and he will go down with his parents, and be subject to them. This "righteousness" also he has to "fulfill," even as a part of that "business."