Lot and his Daughters

School of Johann Liss · 1600–50

Medium

Oil on copper

Original size

Diam.: 33.9 cm (13 3/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Mannerism

Painted on copper in the style of Johann Liss, this intimate yet dramatically charged scene draws the eye immediately into a pool of warm candlelight, where three figures are bound together by a story both troubling and deeply human. Johann Liss was a German-born painter who found his voice in Venice and Rome during the early seventeenth century, absorbing the loose, sensuous brushwork of the Venetians and the theatrical shadow of Caravaggio. His circle favored copper as a support precisely for its ability to hold fine detail while lending colors an almost glowing depth — a quality especially suited to nocturnal scenes like this one. The result is figures that feel simultaneously monumental and tender, lit from within rather than illuminated from outside. Copper panel paintings from this period were often produced as luxury cabinet pieces, intended for private contemplation rather than public display — which makes the intimate scale of works like this one entirely deliberate. The Art Institute of Chicago's original remains one of the finer examples of Liss's influence surviving in North America. This hand-painted oil reproduction is executed on the same medium — oil on copper — allowing the luminous warmth and tonal subtlety of the original to translate with a fidelity that print or digital reproduction simply cannot match.