Unknown artist, Netherlands

Lot's Daughters, c.1600, Marble, 43 x 32 cm, Bode-Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; inv. 527, ©️ Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz / Klaus Leukers

Sin after Salvation

Commentary by Jennifer Moldenhauer

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Where artistic treatment of the story of Lot is concerned, the focus until the sixteenth century was almost always on the destruction of the city of Sodom, Lot’s wife’s petrification as a pillar of salt, and the escape and salvation of Lot himself (Genesis 19:1–29).

By contrast, the unknown artist of this relief has chosen to focus on the episode that comes next. This is the moment shortly before the drunken Lot copulates with his virgin daughters and impregnates them; a theme that was depicted only occasionally before 1500. The composition is based on an engraving by Lucas van Leyden from 1530 who, for the first time, added a blatantly erotic dimension and relegated Sodom bursting into flames and Lot’s frozen wife to the background.

By focussing on this point in the narrative, the artist plays with the ambivalence of the sinfulness of the story. Did Lot really not know what he was doing that night, and were the daughters really not driven by their lust, but only by the desire for motherhood and the perpetuation of the family line? Those to whom they were betrothed had died in Sodom, and since Lot also fled with them from the nearby small town of Zoar, they are now isolated from the outside world in the mountain cave. By a nuanced moving between the depicted events of the biblical story and the profane, typically Northern, topos of the ‘Power of Women’ (heroic or wise men dominated by women and their erotic power) and the ‘Unequal Couple’ (love between a couple with a large age gap, usually old men and young girls), the viewer seems to find answers.

In this work, the nameless daughters are presented as active and scheming seductresses. As one daughter, already naked, submits to her father's lustful gaze, she unobtrusively holds out a bowl to her sister so that she can refill it with wine.

But Lot is also given a share of the blame for the incestuous union in this composition. Also naked, sitting upright, and caressing his daughter as he fixes her with a lustful gaze, he seems to be in a state in which, despite his drunkenness, he could have prevented the situation instead of indulging in it.

See full exhibition for Genesis 19:30–38

Genesis 19:30–38

Revised Standard Version

30 Now Lot went up out of Zoʹar, and dwelt in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to dwell in Zoʹar; so he dwelt in a cave with his two daughters. 31And the first-born said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the earth. 32Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve offspring through our father.” 33So they made their father drink wine that night; and the first-born went in, and lay with her father; he did not know when she lay down or when she arose. 34And on the next day, the first-born said to the younger, “Behold, I lay last night with my father; let us make him drink wine tonight also; then you go in and lie with him, that we may preserve offspring through our father.” 35So they made their father drink wine that night also; and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose. 36Thus both the daughters of Lot were with child by their father. 37The first-born bore a son, and called his name Moab; he is the father of the Moabites to this day. 38The younger also bore a son, and called his name Ben-ammi; he is the father of the Ammonites to this day.

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