Offered by Brozzetti Antichità
Giuseppe Gambarini (Bologna, March 17, 1680 – Casalecchio di Reno, September 11, 1725)
Lot and His Daughters
Oil on canvas; Dimensions: cm H 73 x W 93; frame H 88 x W 108 x D 5.5
This painting, of excellent artistic quality, depicts the biblical scene of Lot and his daughters, with the burning city of Sodom in the background, and stylistically can be attributed to the Bolognese painter Giuseppe Gambarini (Bologna, March 17, 1680 – Casalecchio di Reno, September 11, 1725).
The canvas shows Lot seated in the center, already intoxicated, depicted according to the traditional iconography as elderly, gray-haired, and with a long gray beard. With his left hand, he holds a wine flask offered to him by one of his daughters. She is depicted kneeling and leaning against large stone boulders, described as architectural bases, wearing a voluminous dark blue cloak, with her hair covered by a humble cloth headpiece. She looks at the viewer as if to directly engage them in the scene. The other daughter is shown on the left, with her back to the observer, her bare back and dark hair tied with a red ribbon. She too is serving her father a cup to pour the wine into. Surrounding them, a duck placed on a cloth, some bread, and another wine flask enrich the composition, depicting an ongoing banquet.
The scene is set outdoors, where only a large tent supported by branches arranged like a hut provides shelter for the figures. In the background, a landscape with some wooded areas blends chromatically with the blue of the sky. In the distance to the right, the city of Sodom is shown, already destroyed and in flames. Lot's wife and the mother of the two daughters is visible at the city gates, already turned into a pillar of salt.
This biblical episode is narrated in the Book of Genesis (19:10): the patriarch Lot, Abraham’s nephew, offered hospitality in his home to two male angels, offering his virgin daughters to the crowd of Sodom to protect the two angels. They intervened to give Lot’s family time to escape from Sodom, a city located near the Dead Sea, before God destroyed it with a rain of fire and brimstone to wipe out the sin that had consumed it. During their escape, Lot's wife disobeyed the divine command not to look back at the burning city and was transformed into a pillar of salt.
Lot and his daughters reached Zoar, seeking refuge in a mountain cave. Believing that their family was the last surviving on Earth, the two daughters made their father drunk and unknowingly slept with him for two consecutive nights in an attempt to ensure the survival of humankind.
The incestuous act is depicted in the painting discreetly: the artist subtly highlights the consequences of Lot’s drunkenness, and the daughters are portrayed with grace in their seductive approach to him.
Unmistakably of Emilian school, the canvas finds convincing comparisons with the works of Giuseppe Gambarini. The painter was born in 1680 in Bologna into a family of modest means. Around 1693, he became a pupil of Girolamo Negri, a painter active in Lorenzo Pasinelli's workshop, where he met Giampietro Zanotti, who, besides being a study companion, became his first biographer. He later moved to Benedetto Gennari, the nephew of Guercino, where he absorbed the naturalism that led him to adopt the teachings of Giuseppe Maria Crespi and to devote himself primarily to genre painting. The almost complete lack of precise chronological references regarding Gambarini’s artistic production makes reconstructing his artistic journey quite challenging. He likely started as a figurative artist for perspective decorations. In 1709, he went to Vienna, working in the city palace of Prince Eugene of Savoy. He later returned to Bologna, where he was elected a Clementine Academy member in 1709. In works from a little later, the prevailing naturalistic approach bends Pasinelli’s early training in a Guercino-esque direction. In 1712-13, he traveled to Rome, where he studied genre painting, which, starting with the bamboccianti, had gained wide approval in the city. Upon his return to Bologna, he began depicting humble subjects, influenced by Crespi’s work. On December 21, 1716, he was appointed “director of figure” at the Clementine Academy. Gambarini died on September 11, 1725, at the Samperi Palace in Casalecchio di Reno, near Bologna.
The calm, classicist style that characterizes his works from his second Bologna period is also evident in the painting in question, which is well-balanced in composition and color study, very pleasing and with a beautiful scenic effect. Even in this painting, the artist uses a saturated and intense blue, a color frequently found in his works, which Gambarini loved to use to describe soft drapery that dresses his figures. Additionally, the young woman who turns her gaze toward the viewer is very similar to the one portrayed in the painting Scena familiare con filatrice, preserved in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna.
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