With our series Price Tag, we aim to demystify art auctioning, and debunk the surrounding myths. In each installment, we’ll focus on a single work from the Meural art library. See all installments of Price Tag here.

(To accompany this article, we’ve put together a playlist featuring the Lot and His Daughters scene, as painted by artists from the Renaissance through the 19th century.)

“For a painting of this age, provenance, and appeal, by a top-label artist, Lot and His Daughters was a bit of a bargain.” That’s what Catherine Scallen, Associate Professor of Art History at Case Western Reserve University (and a specialist in Northern Renaissance and Baroque art), said of Peter Paul Rubens’ Lot and His Daughters, which sold for £44,882,500 (about $58 million USD) at auction in 2016. (You can watch the video of the sale, here.) It may be hard to believe that $58 million is classified a steal, especially given the careful execution of the sale, and all of the marketing leading up to the event. To fully understand why, exactly, such a work might be worth even more than that sum, let’s explore four key contributing factors: the artist, the subject matter, the provenance, and, of course, marketing.

The artist

Peter Paul Rubens (Dutch, 1577–1640) is considered one of the most important Baroque painters of the 17th century (if not the most important artist of all time). Unlike many of his contemporaries, who found fame only after they died, Rubens was quite successful at making a life as a painter. (Notably, he was also a diplomat, scholar, humanist, architect, linguist, antiquities collector, and businessman, who managed an outsized studio of assistants.) He received requests for commissions (including Lot and His Daughters) from almost all of the European courts of the time. These were mostly “history paintings,” or works that depicted a scene from a well-known narrative (religious or mythological, as opposed to actual history). As is common in the genre, his work is pronounced in its force and drama. His occasionally hyperbolic style led the 19th-century American painter Thomas Eakins to call Rubens “the nastiest, most vulgar, noisy painter that ever lived.” His later work, however, included masterful landscapes. The Telegraph article above even notes that J.M.W. Turner and Thomas Gainsborough “inherited [Rubens’] faithful rendering of atmospherics and nature unfolding.”

This is all to say no one doubts Rubens’ influence or his mastery. The sale of Lot of His Daughters wasn’t even his highest at auction; in 2002, Massacre of the Innocents sold for £49.5 million at Sotheby’s, the most expensive Old Master ever sold—that is, until Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi in 2017.

The subject matter

The story that inspired the painting was taken from the Bible (specifically Genesis 19). While many paintings created at this time (and across the history of art) depict Biblical scenes, the story in question stands out for being especially lurid. As told by the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

The story begins with the visit of two angels to the wicked city of Sodom. The angels, disguised as travelers, find hospitality at Lot’s home, but an angry mob soon surrounds the house demanding that Lot surrender the angels to their lust. Insisting on the sacred rules of hospitality, Lot proposes his own daughters in place of the angels. The Sodomites reject Lot’s shocking offer and attempt to storm his house, only to be struck blind by the angels. The heavenly visitors then inform Lot of the city’s impending destruction and counsel him to flee with his wife and daughters.

On the road out of the city, Lot’s wife disregards the angels’ directives not to look back toward Sodom and is promptly turned into a pillar of salt. The diminished family of three takes refuge in a cave above the town of Zoar, where the story reaches its climax. Convinced that no other men have survived to give them children, Lot’s daughters conspire to get their father drunk and become pregnant by him in turn.

This is the scene that Rubens has painted for us to witness—Lot’s two daughters seducing their own father, for what they believe to be the perseverance of mankind. For a subject matter even as bold as this, Rubens manages to make the work larger-than-life. In a video produced by Christie’s, art critic Alastair Sooke points out the tremendous size of the work, the craftsmanship Rubens shows in the array of tones in the flesh, and the psychological complexity portrayed in the faces of the two daughters making the ultimate sacrifice, and their drunken father. On the matter, Scallen commented, “The subject of the painting allowed Rubens to capitalize on his famed ability to depict the nude human form convincingly and with erotic appeal, while still presenting an acceptably biblical subject. Few Rubens paintings of this large size, quality, and visual interest are left in private hands, which also increased its appeal.”

The provenance

Painted at the height of the artist’s career (circa 1613–1614), Lot and His Daughters went unseen for over a century. As Professor Scallen states, the work is in “excellent condition, a result of being owned by a small handful of prestigious collectors, including Joseph 1, Holy Roman Emperor, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, John Churchill, and a noble French family for the last 130 years.” Christie’s takes advantage of this, including it in one of their many marketing pieces about the work. In most investments, the past owners of a given item won’t affect its value to a serious degree, but the art market is not like other markets. Being part of a storied line of collectors creates intrigue for potential buyers, all of whom have the sort of wealth that makes legacy-building a key consideration.

Christie’s marketing and the “masterpiece” effect

Lot and His Daughters was the highlighted lot at the Old Masters Evening Sale. Leading up to the auction, Christie’s spent a great deal of marketing energy, making sure to reiterate the phrase ‘Ruben’s masterpiece’ whenever possible. “This was the star lot of the auction,” Scallen points out, “and its art-historical importance and visual appeal were confirmed by its placement on loan for a year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in fall 2016.” Among other promotional efforts, the work was called “the greatest and most important painting by the artist remaining in private hands” (by Christie’s Deputy Chairman Paul Raison), and was prominently featured throughout coverage of the event.

The value of a work depends not only on its intrinsic value and perceived importance within the history of art, but faith in the fact it will continue to be heralded. This relies in large part on institutions that have nothing to do with the auction, specifically museums and universities.

So, was it worth it?

“A painting like this is a special kind of investment,” says Scallen. “As a significant production by a major Old Master, it will not be subject so much to the vagaries of contemporary taste. As fewer and fewer paintings of note by Rubens remain in private hands, its value will undoubtedly increase.”

Of course, that only matters if the painting was bought as investment. If it wasn’t, well, only the owner knows how much they would have paid for it. If it was, its value might only be realized when (or if) the owner decides to sell it.