12. Lot and his Daughters

Art Gallery of Ontario

12 Lot and his Daughters, c. 1613-14, Private Collection KIRK NICKEL: Reubens’ scene of Lot and his daughters comes from a Biblical narrative fraught with transgression. NARRATOR: Lot and his daughters have fled the town of Sodom which God vowed to destroy, and shelter in a cave. KIRK NICKEL: The two daughters, afraid that their father’s lineage may have come to an end, devise to get him drunk and become pregnant by him. The scene certainly lends itself to the display of flesh, and that would have been a significant aspect in its appeal for the patron who ultimately acquired the work. Rubens also layered the scene with a surprising amount of moral ambiguity. Rubens presents Lot as the more complicated character - his leering gaze at his naked daughter presents him as perhaps the predator. NARRATOR: And in fact, Rubens modeled Lot’s head and torso on an ancient sculpture of a Satyr – a notoriously lecherous creature. But the old man’s reclining pose draws on a famous Michelangelo painting of a young woman, who is seduced by Zeus, king of the Gods. KIRK NICKEL: So in the single figure of Lot, Rubens is pitting references to seducer and seduced in equal parts. For those viewers who were aware of the references Rubens was making, the scene becomes all the more ambiguous and harder to read for its moral lesson - NARRATOR: - as well as flattering to their knowledge of classical and Renaissance art.