Jacob and His Twelve Sons

[3] It is not known how the paintings reached England, although some speculate that they may have been captured by English pirates while being transported from the painter's studio in Seville to a buyer in a Spanish colony in the Americas.

[3] It was later owned by London banker James Mendez, whose heirs sold twelve of the thirteen to Richard Trevor, Bishop of Durham in 1757.

[5] The portrait of one of Jacob's sons, Benjamin, was sold separately to the Peregrine Bertie, 3rd Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven;[3] it hangs in Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire.

It hangs, with Jacob and the other eleven sons, in the Castle's Long Dining Room, which Bishop Trevor rebuilt for the purpose of displaying the pictures.

[7][8] In 2001 the Church Commissioners voted to sell the paintings, a decision that was revoked in 2011 following a donation of £15 million by investment manager and philanthropist Jonathan Ruffer; new arrangements placed the paintings, along with the castle, under the Auckland Castle Trust, making them available to the public after centuries during which they hung in a private home where they could be seen only by invited guests or by special arrangement with the Bishop's staff.