Lot and his Daughters

Leonhard Kern

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

After their home in Sodom was destroyed, Lot and his two daughters fled to the mountains, where the girls concluded that their only hope of procreating was with their own father (Genesis 19:30-38). This group shows one of them plying him with wine to achieve her goal; her sister turns away in shame. The scene was popular with artists, its scandalous nature being justified by its biblical source. Like the nearby Standing Woman, this work is carved from a soft wood; its generalized details differ from those of the more incisively cut boxwood sculpture of Christ at the Column beside it.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art