Lot and His Daughters

The French poet and theatre-maker Antonin Artaud stood in front of this small panel and built an essay around it, later collected in his 1938 book The Theatre and Its Double. What held him was the sky. Fire pours down on Sodom, a tower is breaking apart, and ships lie snapped in half in the harbour. In the foreground Lot sits outside a red tent with one of his daughters in his arms, while the other walks off carrying a heavy flask. The Bible story ends with the daughters making their father drunk and conceiving his children, and the wine is already here. The painter is unknown. For a long time the picture passed as the work of Lucas van Leyden, and the Louvre, which bought it in 1900, now places it among painters of Antwerp or Leiden in the 16th century.