House of Farnese
"The Blind Leading the Blind" and "The Misanthrope" were discovered in the collection of the Count Giovanni Battista Masi of Parma in 1612, when Ranuccio I Farnese, Duke of Parma confiscated Masi's property for his part in a conspiracy against the House of Farnese. How the painting arrived in Italy is uncertain, though it is known that Masi's father Cosimo returned from the Netherlands in 1595 with a number of Netherlandish paintings. The Farnese art collection came to be one of the largest of the Renaissance era, divided amongst the Farnese residences in Parma and Rome.