Lot and his daughters

Lot and His Daughters — the biblical narrative from Genesis in which Lot's daughters, believing all men dead after Sodom's destruction, intoxicate their father and conceive children by him — was an exceptionally popular subject in seventeenth-century painting because it provided theological justification for depicting a nude female figure in an intimate erotic situation. Guercino treated the subject with the moralizing ambiguity the narrative required: the daughters' beauty is evident, but the wine, the sleeping figure, and the narrative context signal transgression. The composition connects to a tradition running through Artemisia Gentileschi and Simon Vouet, all working from the same Ovidian-biblical double valence.

The triangular figural grouping of Lot and his two daughters is typically arranged with the sleeping patriarch as the horizontal base and the daughters' figures providing vertical incident above. Guercino's warm, amber light bathes the flesh tones in a glow that is simultaneously sensuous and ominous.