8.3 Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife in Post-Reformation Europe
Whereas Islamic painters often worked closely with texts that physically
and metaphorically framed their paintings, European artists often segre-
gated visual interpretation from textual meaning. The most famous paint-
ing of the scene in the Islamic world, attributed to Bihzad, cannot be
interpreted without an intertextual reading of the Quran, the poetry of
Sa’di, which it illustrates, and of Jami, intertwined within the image frame.
The European autonomy of painting becomes readily evident in represen-
tations of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
Europe. Can the same art-historical methods of iconographic and contex-
tual analysis equally serve the interpretation of both realms of painting?
Christian interpretation of the story varied across time and place.
Archbishop of Constantinople John Chrysostom’s(349–407) misogynistic
characterization of Potiphar’s wife as a woman“aflame with satanic desire,”
who“fell upon the young man like a wild animal grinding its teeth”did not
persist in Catholic doctrine, despite its advocacy of chastity.^90 Rejecting the
monastic asceticism of the church, Martin Luther (1483–1546) used the
narrative to underscore the importance of marriage by contrasting
Joseph’s chastity with surrounding temptations. Elsewhere advocating
secret, second marriages for women with impotent husbands, he avoids
the redemptive detail of Potiphar’s impotence central to Jami’sinterpreta-
tion. He compares her treachery to that of his opponents, comparing Joseph
both to Christ and to himself as falsely accused.^91 This interpretation
reinforced heterosexual marital norms and upheld Protestantism.
Whereas in Timurid Persia, poetry served as the popular art infiltrating
society with religious interpretation, in Europe, pictures served this func-
tion. The earliest printed illustrations of the story appear in a woodcut of
the judgment of the wife before Potiphar in the Nuremberg Chronicle
(1493). Lucas van Leyden’s 1512 and Heinrich Aldegrever’s 1532 engrav-
ings depict this scene as well as the seduction, which would later become
the common illustration of the story. [Figure 13] Van Leyden litters the
floor with symbols of sexual impropriety: a spilled container, scattered
slippers, and a fallen hat.^92 The one image divergent from Luther’s inter-
pretation, printed by Sebald Beham in 1526, probably in Nuremberg, was
quickly subject to censorship. [Figure 14] By depicting bothfigures as
naked and displaying Joseph’s genitals, Beham suggests an interpretation(^90) Mattox, 2003 : 234. (^91) Mattox, 2003 : 236–240.
(^92) See Weis, Beyer, and Altcappenberg, 2014.
256 The Transgressive Image