Lot and his Daughters,
oil on panel, 75 x 96 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Christie’s, London, 22 April 2005, lot 17 (as Attributed to Pieter Pourbus, sold for £ 26,400);
Private collection, Rome

The present painting on panel represents the Biblical episode (Genesis 13:10) of the destruction of the city of Sodom in the background, and the consequent incestuous relation between the elderly Lot and his two daughters who feared for the extinction of their people, owing to their flight into uninhabited territories.

This painting was made at Antwerp, an important centre of Flemish art and a crucible of diverse cultural and artistic influences between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The artist adopts a style that is close to that of the so-called Master of the Prodigal Son, who had a flourishing studio in the city during the period spanning 1530 and 1560. The paintings produced by this atelier are distinguished by their Old Testament subjects and their stylistic reminiscences of the works of Pieter Aertsen and Frans Floris, however they also reveal certain Italian traits, that evidently the Master brought back to Antwerp, following a likely journey to Rome.