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 told 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 spreading, decided to destroy them. Two angels were sent to warn Lot and help him escape, but during the flight his wife disobeyed and turned back to look at the city in flames, Immediately transformed into a salt statue. And Loth and his two daughters found refuge in a cave, and there, fearing that they would not have any other man to procreate with them and perpetuate their seed, The daughters got their father drunk and laid with him carnally while he slept unaware of what was happening, getting pregnant.

The protagonists are here depicted in half-obscured, placed in the foreground compared to the neutral black background, In some ways, it is the same setting that Giorgione used in his famous painting The Three Ages of the Man, kept at the Galleria Palatina in Florence. From a formal and chromatic point of view, in fact, the canvas under consideration can be referred to a Venetian artist active around the middle of the XVIII century, The European Community has been a great example of this. The wise use of light and color are, in fact, distinctive elements of Venetian painting of this period: masterly exploiting light to create atmospheric effects, 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 brushstrokes in a bold and contradictory way, create a dynamic narrative effect.

The artist limits here the sexual aspect of the story, giving his figures more dignity and a deeper psychological interaction: the canvas alludes with great balance and measure to events without showing them in their totality, capturing the exact moment when you begin to perceive the intoxication of Loth, Who with his unwatchful gaze, red cheeks of high alcohol content and uncertain balance of body, abandons himself between the bodies of his daughters, These latter caught in the moment of maximum concentration and sensuality for the implementation of their plan. 

The object is in good condition