The Flight of Lot and his Family from Sodom by Peter Paul Rubens

The Flight of Lot and his Family from Sodom by Peter Paul Rubens and workshop (c. 1613–15)

Arise, take thy wife

In Genesis 19 two angels come to Lot in Sodom and warn him that the city will be destroyed. At dawn "the angels pressed him, saying: Arise, take thy wife, and the two daughters which thou hast: lest thou also perish in the wickedness of the city. And as he lingered, they took his hand, and the hand of his wife, and of his two daughters" (Genesis 19:15–16, Douay-Rheims). Outside the city they tell him: "Save thy life: look not back" (19:17). Lot's wife looked behind her, "and was turned into a statue of salt" (19:26).

Rubens paints the family being hurried out, before anyone has looked back.

The procession

The figures fill the canvas almost to its edges, moving from right to left. At the left an angel in a billowing rose-red robe over a green skirt has turned his back to us. His great white wings are spread, his fair curly hair catches the light, and a pale scarf flies from his raised left hand as he points the way ahead. With his right arm he reaches round Lot and draws him along.

Lot is an old man with a long white beard, in a dark blue-black cloak, turning an anxious face towards us with his brows drawn up. Beside him, half hidden, his wife walks with her head covered, pressing a white handkerchief to her eyes. Behind Lot comes the second angel, a young man in orange-red, his grey wings rising behind the daughters; he glances sideways and points onward.

The two daughters bring up the rear at the right. The nearer, with fair plaited hair, in blue and a yellow skirt, carries a basket of golden vessels on her arm, their pierced and polished surfaces catching the light, and looks down. Her sister, in shot pink-violet silk, balances a large bundle on her head with one raised hand. At the far left a small white and grey dog runs ahead of them all.

Behind the group rises a massive stone column, and above the left side the sky is thick with dark smoke.

Colour and gesture

The Ringling Museum describes the picture in terms of gesture, facial expression and emotion, and its "vibrant draperies and brilliant effects of light", which set elegance against the sorrow of the family. The strongest colours are carried by the fabrics: the angel's red, the daughter's yellow and the sheen of the pink silk, against Lot's dark cloak in the middle. The docents' guide notes that the daughters take golden objects with them, against the angels' instructions, and that Lot's wife is shown despondent, just before she looks back.

Rubens and his workshop

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) ran a large studio in Antwerp, and many of its canvases were painted with assistants. The Ringling Museum catalogues this one as by "Peter Paul Rubens and Workshop" and dates it about 1613–15. It is oil on canvas, 220.3 by 243.8 centimetres.

From Antwerp to Sarasota

The museum records that the painting belonged to Pieter Stevens, merchant and almoner of the city of Antwerp, and was in his sale in August 1668. In 1706 the City of Antwerp bought it for 2,000 florins and presented it to John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, and it hung at Blenheim Palace until the eighth Duke's sale at Christie's in 1886. It then passed through the collection of Charles Butler in London, the dealers Agnew's and James Ross of Montreal before John Ringling bought it. It came to the museum with his bequest in 1936 (object number SN218) and hangs in Gallery 11.

About this print

Made from a photograph of the whole canvas, in its nearly square format, from the angel's flying scarf at the upper left to the daughter's bundle at the upper right.

Sources: The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, SN218 · Ringling Museum docents, "Departure of Lot" · Wikimedia Commons · Genesis 19:15–26 (Douay-Rheims)