Venetian School, Mid 18th Century, Loth And The Daughters

Venetian school, mid 18th century

Loth and the daughters

Oil on canvas, cm 43 x 57

With frame, cm 70 x 84

The canvas clearly depicts Lot and his daughters, protagonists of the story narrated in Genesis (19,30 - 38) and closely intertwined with the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot, the grandson of Abraham, lived in Sodom with his family, until God, seeing their corruption and sin rampant, decided to destroy them. Two angels were sent to warn Loth and help him escape, but during the flight his wife disobeyed and turned back to look at the burning city, which was immediately transformed into a salt statue. Loth and his two daughters found refuge in a cave: here, fearing they had no other man to procreate with and perpetuate their seed, the daughters made their father drunk and lay with him carnally while he slept unaware of what was happening, getting pregnant.

The protagonists are depicted here in half-height, placed in the foreground compared to the neutral black background, in some ways taking up the setting inaugurated by Giorgione in the famous painting The three ages of man, kept at the Palatine Gallery in Florence. From a formal and chromatic point of view, in fact, the canvas under examination can be referred to a Venetian artist active around the middle of the eighteenth century, who had the opportunity to compare with the great models of previous centuries. The wise use of light and color are, in fact, distinctive elements of Venetian painting of this period: masterfully exploiting light to create effects of atmosphere, depth and softness, the artist gives life to a work of great charm and realism. The colors used, bright and vibrant, juxtaposed with quick and pasty strokes in a bold and contradictory way, create a dynamic narrative effect.