As you might imagine, London has exposed me to quite a lot of Christian art. I must stay on constant vigil or I might trip over some beautiful relief adorning the road or bash into a figure jutting out from some building at exactly the right height to clock me in the head.

Looking upon endless intricate art portraying Jesus Christ this or Virgin Mary that, it becomes apparent to me is that Joseph really seems to have drawn the short straw in the Christianity fanfare. I mean, just think about that poor guy for a second. He woos and marries a beautiful and compassionate woman but before he can even consummate their union God slips in and beats him to it.

Now he's stuck raising someone else's kid without help on a peasants salary. He can't sleep with Mary because that would rather ruin this whole virgin mother narrative that has turned her into literal overnight pop culture sensation, and he can't sleep with anyone else because now he's roped into this Son of God nonsense whether he likes it or not, and adultery would just be kind of awkward.

After decades of laboring to feed, dress, and educate the boy (he's only the son of god, no pressure) Jesus goes out into the world and generally makes a favorable impression on a few people. Does anyone attribute Jesus' good manners or philosophies to Joe's parenting? Does anyone think to thank and congratulate Joseph for his toiling work to give the physical embodiment of all that is Holy a proper upbringing? Nope. JC's cool absentee dad who did nothing after cuckolding Joe and bailing gets all the credit for how cool the kid turned out. Of course.

And as for Marry, the only time I've seen Joseph and Marry together in a picture is in the manger, and very rarely ever after. Never during the raising of Christ, never depicting family life or other such. In fact, I've now seen more pictures of Mary and John the Baptist either holding each other or sitting next to each other than I have of Mary and Joseph.

If classical paintings were in the day like Instagram today, you'd assume there's something more going on there.

And what about the raising of Christ? Surely it was taxing work filled with stories of endearment and lessons in maturation and spiritual growth for the church to spin sermons from. Parenting is hard. Parenting a bastard teen who really is as important as he thinks he is must be Hell. But no, all we ever see is the Christ child or the Christ beard. Where's Christ the adolescent? Where are all the Biblical stories of Joseph trying to get Christ to stop running around on water and do his homework? I can just imagine a young Jesus screaming "I don't want to be a carpenter! YOU CANT TELL ME WHAT TO DO! YOU'RE NOT MY REAL DAD!"

Poor Joe. Despite being more present in Christ's life than God, you ended up being entirely incidental to the most influential legacy on Earth.

-Photos taken at the London National Gallery