Abraham Bloemaert, 'Lot and his Daughters', 1624

Abraham Bloemaert was among the most influential artists of the Dutch Golden Age. Based in Utrecht, he started out as a Mannerist painter but eventually adopted a more classicising style while also coming under the influence of the work of the Dutch Caravaggisti. This work is a spectacular example of this later style. Its strong triangular composition brims with primary colours and beautifully observed still-life details.

The painting’s subject is the Old Testament story of Lot and his daughters, popular because of its moralising potential and dramatic possibilities. Spared on account of his virtue, Lot escaped God’s destruction of the immoral city of Sodom with his wife and two daughters. After the loss of his wife, who was turned to salt for disobeying God’s command not to look back at the burning city, Lot’s own daughters seduced him in order to ensure the continuation of the human race. Lot looks hazily to the ground, seemingly unaware of the unsteady drinking cup he holds in his hand. A shadow cast by his wide-brimmed hat falls over his eyes, symbolic of his obliviousness to the intentions of his alert and scheming daughters. Since the medieval period, paintings of this subject served to moralise both the dangers of female seduction and the overconsumption of alcohol.

The painting is indebted to the work of Bloemaert’s many pupils, notably that of Gerrit van Honthorst of the 1620s. Its monumental style has resulted in it being attributed to several artists over the years, including Peter Paul Rubens. The discovery of Bloemaert’s signature and the date 1624 during the picture’s restoration in 2004 showed it to be a fine example of a work painted at the height of the painter’s artistic maturity, when he was in his late fifties but keeping up with the latest trends in painting with the gusto of a budding young artist.