TODAY I will talk to you about an episode of the book of Genesis, Lot and his daughters and its

exegetical and iconographic treatment during the early years of Reformation.

The first interesting thing to notice is that we do perceive terms such as sex and sainthood as
antinomics, right? If we look at the exempla of Saints' lives from Late Antiquity to the days of
Martin Luther, sexual inhibition was equal to sanctity. {} But this was not the case when one looked
into the Bible: the Old Testament, is filled with many tales of sexual misbehaviours. These of
course, were perceived by both Christian and Hebrew commentators as real sins, because God
himself had established in the Bible a strict sexual code for Israel. Nevertheless, those bad deeds
were sometimes performed by people whose life was pointed, by Scriptures, as exemplar for a saint
life.
{} For both Jews and Christians, every man inherits Sin from Adam and Eve. {} For Christians,
however, you can redeem yourself from the 'original sin' through sacraments and be pure again. {}
And therefore to be fully responsible of your own deeds during all your lifetime, until death {}. For
Christianity before Reformation, then, you eventually gain salvation through good works in your
own life..
Speaking of Sex, implies a double dimension: one related to generation and one related to intimate
pleasure. As a mean to gain a progeny to the kin, sex is blessed. In Judaism it is essential for the
righteous to carry on the family. In Christianity, several saints were married and had sons who
eventually will became saints at their turn.
But if sex is the consequence of a low, earthly desire to get satisfaction or power, it will only
generate corruption and pain. God established very distinctly which were sexual habits to avoid. {}
The list of sexual crimes in Leviticus is mainly concerned to avoid interbreeding between relatives,
while a smaller part is related to other deeds concerning sexual life of individuals. That's because
purity of blood line was the major concern and the son born after an impure intercourse cannot be
presented to God.
NOW, the story I'm about to present, contains both these dimensions. There are troubled sexual acts
conducted in a desperate condition. Sex is here the solution to a moral dilemma: is it more 'saint' (or
'right') to save the paternal seed, or to disobey to the natural law? For Biblical scholars the issue
was thus posed: How was it possible that Lot has been considered by Scriptures as 'righteous', if he
get drunk and permitted the incest? Was his daughters' act moved by a right end or by the desire of
taking command of the progeny with a trick?.
{} This is Sodom. Lot and his family went to live in this town since the separation with his uncle
Abraham, who settled in Palestine. One day, God hears that the Sodomites were sinners and

decides to punish them. When the angels sent for that arrived to Sodom, in disguise of men, they
found Lot sitting at the gate of the city. Like also Abraham made before him, he invites them to
come to his house and have some rest.
{} But then, the male population of Sodom, gathers in front of Lot's house and asks for the men, for
they want to abuse of them. Lot offers, as a counterpart for the sake of his guests, his daughters'
virginity, but the Sodomites refuse the exchange and try to force the door. Then finally the Angels
take control of the situation and save Lot from the crowd, by striking them with blindness. They
also urge Lot to leave Sodom before the cataclysm begins.
{} As soon as they have left the city, God sends a rain of sulphuric rocks from above. Turning back
to look at the destruction of her city, Lot's wife is turned into a pillar of salt.
{} They moved soon after from Zoar and went to settle in a Cave nearby. Because they couldn't find
any one to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth, the daughters decide to deceive the
old father into drunkenness and abuse of him to keep the paternal seed alive in history. So they
served wine to their father twice, and slept with him. It is said that the Patriarch never perceived, or
remembered, what happened to him. {} From this double incest, two new people would descend:
Moabites and Ammonites, enemies of Israel in historical times.
{} So we have the daughters performing a virtuous act, made against the natural law; and a father
who is said to be unconscious during the embraces (therefore not responsible of lust), but that
indulged into drunkenness making the incest possible. We have then a serious sexual transgression
whose responsibility is unknown.
The act of the girls was not considered as lust. Because their aim was sacred, they did not
committed any moral fault. This was the opinion of the early Jewish and Christians commentators.
The accusations fell almost exclusively on Lot. But why then, if he was culpable, was he later
recognized as righteous? {} In order to find an answer, Christian authors tended to see behind the
account of the incest, a symbolic representation of moral figures: so Origen transforms Lot into the
Mind and his daughters in Pride and Vain Glory; Augustine saw in Lot the Law with those who
wants to keep her alive against his will, so Jews and Gentiles. A clear responsibility was thus not
established.
{}
Martin Luther reading of this text was radically new. He took the character of Lot as the best
example to show the inability of man to gain his personal salvation, with his actions only. He in fact
asserted that neither Lot nor his daughters were responsible for what happened.
{} In this passage Luther says: Lot was saved even if he offered his daughters to Sodomites,
thinking that he could avoid a more serious crime. Also the daughters were saved, even if God knew
their intentions. In facts, our salvation or punishment does not depend from what we do, but from

who we are. Or, to put that differently, on how we do behave under horrible, but necessary,
circumstances. Luther insists very much on this point. We cannot really know the innermost
intentions of anyone whatsoever.
{} Weaknesses are part of our nature. Each one of us acts in response to what God has planned for
him, but it's impossible for humans to foresee it and act consequently. But why then Lot was
considered a just man?
{} Luther affirms that modelling our judgement upon what we do believe is that of God; or trying to
imitate the actions of the Saints, will not give us any good. Laws and rules are built after exceptions
and singular cases. But being such an exception in God's plan is nobody else's choice. Lot is then an
heroic man, because he grew up in the Rule, he really wanted to act well, but he had to surrender
to God's plan for the future. Grace is then donated in proportion not with our actions, in a certain
condition that is independent from us, but with our faith.
For Lutherans one will never stop to sin. But sin is not necessarily a symptom of a lack of faith.
Such as good works are not a sign of true faith. Biblical character are not therefore exempla,
examples, to imitate but rather miracula, or exemplar cases of divine speech. This marks the gap
between OT and Christian saints. They do not deserve honours because they were sinners.
Lot and his daughters were cases in point. God saved them by the extermination of the Sodomites.
While their commessationes et potationes were evil, those of Lot and his daughter were pious:
very same actions, completely different meaning in history.
{}. This is the Schneeberg Altarpiece, by Lucas Cranach, it dates 1539, and it is the first altarpiece
used to illustrate some basic precepts of Lutheran theology. I think that there's no need to be an art
historian to perceive how revolutionary this altarpiece must have been appeared to believers,
comparing with the Catholic ones.{} These changes were both in construction and in iconography:
the choice of themes to be represented and their assemblage, are reflecting new ideas, ideas that
really had much subverted traditional forms.
{} The week-day, closed position, shows a motif which had been elaborated during the previous ten
years by Lucas Cranach and Martin Luther together. That between Martin and Lucas was a true
friendship and because Martin trusted his friend, he wanted him to paint some key concepts of his
doctrine.
{} Lutheran reformers, were not against images per se but to images as a focus for praying to
celestial forces. The design, of those pictures proves that their intention was to start a reasoning
about some theme rather than to create the illusion of the presence of divine beings. Paintings, as
the Bible, must be instructive and, just as the Bible, their deeper meaning is not literal. Here we may
see represented Law and Gospel or otherwise Work and Grace.

{} We can see from the picture the main iconographic types. Even if it could seem that we have a
typological comparison between Old and New Testament, it is not. The figure of Christ the Judge in
the left half of the panel is a New Testamentary one. It represents the Final Judgement based on the
actions of men. Christ is ruling here over damnation, pointing at the sword instead of at the palm
branch. In such a context, the left side panel of the altarpiece represents the literal and therefore
wrong interpretation of Scriptures, that lead to eternal death. While the right side shows the
Promises of the Gospels to Evangelical believers. He is thus showing us the passage from an
arid adhesion to a living comprehension of Scriptures, inaugurated by the Evangelical Reform.
{} The naked men are Christian souls. No one before Lucas had put the common man at the
centre of a religious painting likewise: by redoubling the presence of the viewer (one outside and
two, inside the painting), Cranach supports a detached, not inclusive gaze to the space thus created.
{} If we look at the rear panel we'll find our subject along with another scene from Genesis, the
Flood. In the central panel there's a very strange rendition of the Last Judgement.
{} The connexion between Lot and Noah is an ancient one. Their lives followed a common pattern
and they were both recognized as righteous. They represented lives who were miraculously saved...
but whose miseries have not yet ceased.
{} The rear panels of this altarpiece were seen by faithful at the moment of the Communion. Unlike
the Catholics, the Lutheran believer receive the bread on his left, pass Lot, the Judgement and Noah
and then receive also the wine on the right side. Such a dim programme between bread and wine
marked another major difference from Catholic liturgy. In the Catholic Church one can partake the
Communion only if he had remitted his sins through Confession. From an Evangelical point of
view, Communion then became the presumption of being delivered from sins. Lutherans didn't
believe in remission through other men: taking the Body - and Blood - of Christ, was then an
obligation to receive and believe, and not a justification. Our sinful nature must be continuously
remembered. {} It's then no surprising that the feast-day opened position of the altarpiece is a
representation of the Crucifixion, the apotheosis of Grace.
THE DEPICTION of this scene, at the time it was painted, was a rarity. Indeed we can hardly find
any representation of that during the whole 15th century, neither in Italy nor in Northern Europe.
But it explodes from different spots in the same time, around 1530. Lucas Cranach's first version of
this iconography is from 1529, then other nine paintings will follow.
Meanwhile another famous painter was elaborating the subject... {} Lucas von Leyden, in this
painting at the Louvre. But he get far more explicit once he can treat that in engravings {}. In those
years, Lutheran ideas were spreading all over the Netherlands. The debate here was mostly about
the efficacy of Sacraments. The Sacramentarians, a group of Dutch Reformers echoing Lutherans'

ideas, thought that only the Faith of the individual would have conveyed the Holy Spirit into the
bread... I suggest that the appearance of bread, otherwise inexplicable, in many Dutch paintings on
the subject, is related to this debate. Proofs of Luca's interest in similar rare scenes from the Bible
showing the weakness of Patriarchs, come from altarpieces such as The Dance around the Golden
Calf or the Sin of Moses.
Because, so to speak, Lot had been absolved from both his deeds and from his role of exemplum,
images of him with other purposes than predication could be treated as those of any other historical
figure. It is no surprise to see how freely this myth had been treated in Protestant countries. In
Catholic countries this theme arrives, as far as I could verify, only after the Council of Trent. The
evident erotic tone used by German and Dutch painters was slightly diminished and the characters
were deprived of their malice. With few exceptions. {} This painting of Massimo Stanzione shows
the dependence from German models. This other engraving from Agostino Carracci belongs to
series of the Lascivie or lecheries. {} But in the beautiful series of Orazio Gentileschi's
paintings on the subject, any sort of sexual underpinning has been sublimed into an image of piety.
Even the last drop of wine has been poured, the dark moments are over and we have nothing more
to do than to look forward and forget.
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