Lot and his daughters

Lot and His Daughters (c. 1655) is one of Metsu's rare biblical subjects, painted during his Leiden period before genre scenes became his primary focus. The subject — from Genesis 19, in which Lot's daughters get their father drunk and sleep with him to preserve the family line after the destruction of Sodom — was a standard in the Baroque repertoire of morally complex biblical narrative, painted by Rembrandt, Rubens, and many others. For Dutch painters, such subjects required handling the combination of drunkenness, eroticism, and theological context with some care. Metsu's version, on panel at the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence, likely treats the subject in a relatively sober manner compared to Italian or Flemish versions — the Dutch tradition generally preferred narrative clarity over theatrical display.

Oil on panel with a more dramatic tonal range than Metsu's genre scenes — the biblical subject justifying stronger contrasts of light and shadow in the Caravaggesque tradition. Multiple figures interacting require compositional control that differs from his usual single or paired domestic subjects.