Lot with daughters

The painting was brought to Łańcut castle from Wilanów on the order of Princess Lubomirska. It depicts an elderly man and two women plying him with wine (one pointing to an amphora standing on the ground, the other holding an amphora in one hand and a wine-filled cup in the other). This is an illustration for a scene described in the Old Testament book of Genesis and depicting Lot, Abraham’s nephew, and his two daughters. This was after the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah by angels sent by God. Lot, as a righteous man, thanks to the angels’ warning, took his wife and daughters and fled to the mountains. As we know, Lot’s wife looked back at the burning city and was turned into a pillar of salt. Lot and daughters went to the mountains and lived in a cave. And there the two daughters of Lot, whose fiancés were killed in the fire, desired a man, and having made their father drunk with wine, they had intercourse with him in turn. Both later gave birth to sons, Moab and Ben-Ammi. Both became the protoplasts of the Moabites and Ammonites. The painting from Łańcut depicts a scene in which daughters ply their father with wine. The painting is signed and dated on the amphora standing on the ground, “B. Litterini 1695”. Bartolomeo Litterini (Letterini born in Venice in 1669, died in Venice in 1731) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period. He was the son of the painter Agostino, who taught him the secrets of the art of painting in his workshop. He painted mainly religious scenes, which were illustrations to the events of the Holy Scripture or lives of saints. Not all of his works have been identified, as this is hampered by the fact that his father was also a painter and thus bore the same surname, hence some works made by the son have been attributed to his father. Recent research has confirmed that in addition to the religious current he also created paintings with mythological content, but the vast majority of his works were related to the church, both in terms of content and order. The Łańcut painting is exhibited together with the painting Susanna and the Elders in the Parade Corridor on the first floor of the Castle.