On the other side, there is another supernatural being with a bigger body and larger wings. One side of the painting has a purple background and the other a blue background. Unlike the man in the painting, the artists used bright colours for supernatural beings to draw the viewer's attention. The sketch style and the background colour choice also show that the events are in the dream or fantasy world. The painting depicted the Biblical vision that Jacob had when he was fleeing from his brother Esau. Jacob was asleep when he dreamt of a ladder leading to heaven from earth. The angles in the painting are the angles that Jacob saw using the ladder to move from heaven to earth and back.
There are different interpretations of the importance of the ladder in Jacob's dream. Some interpretations of the dream claim that the ladder signifies the divine connection between God and Jacob's family. The dream was God's way of encouraging Jacob to continue with his mission and fulfil his people's destiny. The style used in the artwork is Surrealism. Surrealism is a movement in visual art and literature flourished in Europe between World War I and World War II. Unlike the previous art styles that mainly focused on negation, surrealists emphasised on positive expression. The style was a reaction against what the movement members saw as destruction brought by the rationalism-guided European culture and politics that led to World War I.
Surrealism as an art style was a way of reuniting both the conscious and unconscious realms of experience to introduce the world of dream and fantasy to our everyday rational world. The painting is now under the custody of an anonymous private owner from Tel Aviv. The new owner purchased the painting from Migdal insurance in January 2020. Since Migdal insurance paid the claim when the painting was stolen in 1996, they became the painting's owner in 2015, thanks to the court ruling. The painting was found in the estate of an elderly woman in Jerusalem after her death.
