Lot and His Daughters

In 1617 the Dutch painter, Gerrit van Honthorst, was working in Rome on night scenes lit by candles, the kind that earned him the Italian nickname Gherardo delle Notti, Gerard of the Nights. That October, Prince Marcantonio Borghese ordered a canvas from Giovanni Francesco Guerrieri to hang above a door in the family palace, and the painter answered with a night scene of his own. In the story from Genesis, Lot has fled the destruction of Sodom with his two daughters, and in a hiding place in the hills they get their father drunk so that the family line will survive. One daughter pours wine from a golden jug into the bowl he holds, while her sister leans in against him. Guerrieri caught the Dutch manner so well that 18th-century inventories filed the picture under Gherardo delle Notti. Through the dark trees behind them, Sodom is still burning red.