A Lot to learn about the Bible
Search online for “Lot’s wife” and you’ll get a tedious procession of holiday snapshots of earthquake-daring piles of rocks all over the world that have been dubbed Lot’s Wife, intermingled with garishly painted depictions of the biblical salt-pillar scene from Christian websites.
Search online for “Lot and his daughters”, though, and the screen turns pink with fine art at its salivating, prurient best. Were the great masters of the past mere sensationalists?
It seems to me that Lot’s wife Irit failing to heed the divine warning and turning around to look at her hometown in flames — only to be crystallised in punishment in the presence of her husband and daughters (who presumably knew what was happening even though they couldn’t look to check) — is a scene smacking with potential for any artist.
Anguish, horror, heartbreak, a woman flash-frozen in an attempt to escape — this instant is a tableau with so much possibility.
But there was more to the story — the part that I wasn’t taught in junior-school Bible lessons: Lot’s daughters later got the old man drunk so he’d have sex with them.
Guess which part of the story interested the painters of olden days who had to come up with a specified quota of biblical scenes?
No, I didn’t know about “Part 2: Wine and Incest” until I saw the painting at the top of this post and wondered what Lot was doing with his hand on his daughter’s tit. I looked it up on Wikiexplaintia and was genuinely shocked — at yet another example of my teachers censoring my education.
The painting above is “Lot and His Daughters” by “a follower” of Frans Floris the Elder, and Sotheby’s London is selling it this month for hopefully £8,000.
It’s a virtual copy, the auction house admits, of Floris’ own painting, which the Hermitage Museum in Russia has, but isn’t about to put it online, let alone on sale. The image here comes from one of those wonky Internet poster shops. Actually I think Floris’ follower did a better job, but maybe this is just a badly made poster.
Floris (1517-70) was Flemish painter and for some fishy reason had about a dozen aliases. A stonecutter’s son, he went in for sculpture but realised his brother was way better at it and started painting instead.
He was a hit with rich Spaniards and Belgians, especially with the biblical and other mythological stuff. He could turn a good canvas, eye-catching in every way. Look at “Fall of the Rebel Angels” from 1554:
