Cast Your Vote! Which Awful Painting Should I Use to Illustrate?

I’m torn, my darlings. I’ve got one really terrible Bible story: Lot’s daughters seducing raping him. I’ve got two paintings illustrating said seduction rape. I’m not sure which one will say it best. So tell me which I should use in my forthcoming book, Really Terrible Bible Stories.

Should it be Joachim Antonisz Wtewael‘s Lot and His Daughters:

Image is a painting of Lot and his daughters. The daughters are nude aside from a strategically-placed scarf hiding one girl's hoohaw. Lot has one hand on her boobie and the other on his wine.
Joachim Antonisz Wtewael’s Lot and His Daughters.

Or should it be Marcantonio Francescini’s Lot e le figlie:

Image shows a very dazed-looking Lot lying back with his head cradled by one daughter who hold's a wine jar. The other daughter is holding a bowl of wine up to him. There are boobies.
Marcantonio Francescini’s Lot e le figlie.

Let me know which it should be!

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Cast Your Vote! Which Awful Painting Should I Use to Illustrate?
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30 thoughts on “Cast Your Vote! Which Awful Painting Should I Use to Illustrate?

  1. 6

    Francescini’s.
    The first features women that seem to be done by someone without access to actual female models. Male skeletal anatomy and heavy musculature with breasts. Grating to any student of anatomy. The first is cluttered with a lot of stuff that doesn’t fit the presumably sparse setting for the scene and doesn’t use contrast or composition very well.
    Lot looks appropriately insensate in the second, much better use of lighting, contrast and composition.

    The first image might be fitting representation for a poorly written, badly thought out story, as a header image it’s just too busy and full of jarring elements.

  2. 7

    The second one. Darker and matches the story better with Lot looking really out of it and helpless and the daughter’s still pouring drink into him. By the way, do we ever get the daughter’s names – or like Jephthah’s human sacrifice do the women actors remain nameless here?

  3. 8

    I agree that the whole atmosphere of the Francescini is a better representation of the story. As for the girls’ names, I don’t recall ever hearing them, although as kids, we were sure his wife was called Sifto. (Ten year-old Canadians found that hilarious. Trust me.)

  4. 9

    I have to say #1, because it probably was right on the edge of prurience at the time it was painted; religious art filled the purpose of both marketing and pornography and Lot is shown here as a Jeffrey Epsteinish wealthy party-boy — the kind of sleaze who molested his own children and concocted an elaborate generational rationalization for it and blamed his daughters for the whole thing. Seriously, does anyone believe Lot’s story that the daughters ‘seduced’ him?

  5. 10

    Artistically, the second one is better and fits the story. On the other hand, the first one makes me think that the whole “they got me drunk and raped me” was after-the-fact justification for what Lot did willingly to his daughters.

  6. 15

    “they got me drunk and raped me”

    Seems much more plausible that he got drunk and raped them, then the rest of the story is glued-on post facto self-justification. ‘Cuz girls be cray-cray, ya know?

  7. 18

    It depends.

    The second, by Francescini, looks to be what Lot might present as what happened if he were being accused. He is presented as passive and set upon by the two instigators. The poor guy is stripped of agency, likely by drink, and is being led down the garden path. He just can’t help himself. They lean on him and hold his head to keep his attention and keep him from leaving. It is all about what they are actively doing to him.

    The first, by Wtewael, in addition to being far more pornographic, pictures Lot as having agency and actively responding to the voluptuousness of his daughters. The two daughters are presenting their bodies with what might be false modesty and coyness, the whiff of covering and seemingly innocent presentation of grapes, but , while not quite passively seductive, they are not actively engaging anything but his imagination. The candy is on the table. If anything happens, he is free to fail to notice and/or walk away, it is on Lots dime.

    I think the first, by Wtewael, is better as it is more complex, sexier, and the surrounding details add depth, but not much nuance. The gourds on the staff which is placed suggestively into a looping branch, the coconut, pomegranate in the basket. Wtewael went there probably as far as the custom would allow. The whole scene is full of life and screams of fullness and voluptuousness. The second is, by comparison, wan and weak. The daughters don’t really seem to be deeply engage in the moment. It seems more an intellectual experiment to see how far they can get Lot to go.

    It depends on what aspect, aspects you wish to illustrate. Francescini covers a smaller subject area and includes far fewer facets. It is more focused and as long as the point aligns with one of those facets it will do nicely. Wtewael is far more brutal and far less focused. There is so much going on there that a book-length exposition might be in order. If you intend to do a two page rattle of the high points the second would be better. If you want to dive into the deep waters of the issues of lust, free will, self-control, and agency, and go for a swim the first is better.

  8. 19

    Yes, well Marcus Ranum that’s perfectly plausible, but since the whole thing is probably just multiple retellings of a myth of a story of plagiarised from who knows what, and since with all the rape and murder in the Bible it would be uncharitable to the book to say it excluded women from their share of god-sanctioned nastiness, I think we can go with the “Lot-was-raped-by-his-daughters” idea.

    What is really disgusting to me was that when I read most of the OT as young person, the way the thing was written/translated for some reason made this seem to me like one of the few rape stories in there. All the captive virgins and concubines and daughters etc… for some reason I was completely certain that this was perfectly consensual, even romantic! Now that is a disgusting thing to realise, *that* mindfuck is why the Bible is horrible, not because it includes the notion that two daughters wanting to continue their father’s line in a patriarchal society and secure their inheritance, might.. take things into their own hands.

  9. 20

    As a woman with broad shoulders, thick wrists and other bones, large hands, not much in the way of a waist line (even before I gained weight) and with strong musculature (under a moderate layer of fat because stress and arthritis) I’m moderately annoyed to be told that an anatomy student would find me grating. It’s irritating enough that most clothing designed for women doesn’t sit right on me.

  10. 23

    I vote for Francescini’s. The expression on Lot’s face is classic alcohol-enabled date rape. (Lot was scum, but that doesn’t make what his daughters did okay.)

  11. 24

    Brian Murtagh @ # 20: The expression on Lot’s face is classic alcohol-enabled date rape.

    We need to confirm that with experts. Paging Bill Cosby, paging Michael Shermer…

  12. rq
    27

    Here’s another Wtewael that could work. Different artist, but there’s some interesting narrative imagery here.

    Also, I’ve been thinking a lot about the father-daughter power dynamic, esp. in the context of a heavily patriarchal society. The daughters’ ages are unknown, but Lot’s biography holds that he had them late in life – so, they may not in fact have been adult-aged. The bible being the patriarchal document it is, I’m really wondering who gave who too much wine to drink (or who drank too much wine in order to make excuses later). Because, after all, if there were supposedly no more men in the land for the daughters, it is just as possible that Lot was worried about his potential descendants, too.

    * I would like to note here that I acknowledge that men can be raped by women, and that this is a terrible thing to happen. I hope I don’t sound dismissive of this fact in the above paragraph.

  13. 29

    Ditto to all of this minus the large hands and fat, and plus small hips. It’s not actually that weird to be shaped like this.

    The second one is much more convincingly rapey, if you’re looking to play the story straight.

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