Lot and His Family Leaving Sodom (1620): Art, History and Details

Lot and His Family Leaving Sodom (1620) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Lucas Emil Vorsterman (Flemish, 1595–1675); Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

While traveling in Italy from 1600–1608, Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens met engraver Agostino Carracci and copied his engravings. This inspired him to find engravers capable of reproducing his own paintings. Back in the Netherlands, he carefully selected and supervised several, including Lucas Emil Vorsterman, to carry out his designs. In this scene from the Old Testament, Vorsterman emphasized Rubens’s luminosity and deep shifts between light and shadow, using various techniques to create soft transitions. The shimmering satin fabric (an effect for which Rubens was known) is achieved with thick, curved, parallel lines interspersed with thinner, shorter lines.

Object facts

• Title: Lot and His Family Leaving Sodom
• Date: 1620
• Creator attribution: Lucas Emil Vorsterman (Flemish, 1595–1675); Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640)
• Culture: Flanders
• Type: Print
• Technique: engraving
• Dimensions: Platemark: 33 x 39 cm (13 x 15 3/8 in.); Sheet: 35.2 x 41.4 cm (13 7/8 x 16 5/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Engraving
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1991.266

Collection credit

Seventy-fifth anniversary gift of Louise S. Richards

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1992.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (February 1993): 38–79.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.