Joseph and Potiphar's Wife

Cigoli signed and dated this canvas in 1610 for Antonio Ricci, a churchman who became bishop of Arezzo the following year. By 1613 it belonged to Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul the Fifth, most likely as a gift from Ricci. One scholar has argued it was planned from the start as a partner for a Judith by the Roman painter Giovanni Baglione that Scipione already owned. The two canvases are the same size, and a guidebook of 1650 describes them in the same room of the villa. The Bible story plays here like a bedroom scene. Joseph pulls away under a canopy of heavy damask while the wife of Potiphar, the Egyptian officer he served, grips his cloak. One of her slippers lies overturned in the foreground, and in the lower left corner a small dog, the usual emblem of fidelity, bares its teeth.