Lot drinking (Berlin fragment)

Baldung's Lot Drinking (Berlin fragment) from 1532 is a partial or preparatory version of the Lot subject he would treat more fully in the 1537 paintings, depicting the moment when Lot is made drunk by his daughters—an act of biblical moral complexity that fascinated Baldung in the same period he was treating related themes of female agency, intoxication, and transgressive sexuality in his secular paintings. The fragment status may indicate either a preparatory study or a larger composition from which this section survives, and its 1532 date establishes the chronological context of his engagement with the Lot narrative. Baldung's interest in this subject reflects his broader concern with the morally ambiguous intersections of desire, intoxication, and family obligation that gave his secular work its distinctive psychological charge.

The fragment reveals Baldung's bold approach to potentially scandalous biblical subjects, rendered with his characteristic expressive intensity.