Lot and His Daughters

Francesco Hayez painted Lot and His Daughters around 1833, depicting the disturbing Old Testament episode in which Lot's daughters, believing they are the last survivors of the destruction of Sodom, make their father drunk and sleep with him to preserve humanity. The subject was a vehicle for the combination of moral ambiguity, erotic content, and Old Testament narrative that characterized Hayez's biblical subjects. His treatment places the scene within a landscape of ruin and desolation — Sodom destroyed in the distance — that gives the morally complex human action its appropriate cosmic context. The painting demonstrates his ability to combine the sensuous figure painting of the Venetian tradition with the dramatic narrative subjects of Romanticism.

Hayez renders the biblical scene with his characteristic warm coloring and sensuous handling of the female figures. The Venetian-influenced palette and the careful rendering of flesh tones demonstrate his mastery of the nude within a biblical narrative framework.