Lot and His Daughters

This playlist constitutes renderings of a popular biblical narrative for Renaissance and Early Baroque painters: the strange and upsetting story of Lot’s daughters. In the Old Testament, Lot’s family is visited by two angels who spend the night at the family’s home. A mob forms outside the home and demands that Lot allow the mob to rape the angels, but Lot offers his virginal daughters instead. The daughters are spared when the mob refuses Lot’s offer and the angels blind the mob to put a stop to the scene. The story’s victim shifts when Lot and his daughters flea their town and live in a cave where the daughters encourage their father to become drunk before they each have sex with him while he is unconscious. The image portrayed in oil paintings is almost always of this second scene, often emphasizing the sexual body of each character, and depicting the daughters as nefarious and Lot as drunk but amorous toward his daughters.

To read more about Peter Paul Rubens’ depiction of the scene, and the auction of the work, visit my.meural.com/editorial/53.