that by Bihzad, European interpretations differ considerably.^95 Rather than
conceiving the lovers as engaged in a mutual transcendence of the material/
bodily in favor of the divine, it pits female seduction against male chastity.
The reduction of narrative space to a European bedroom enhances the
prurient yet prudish pleasure of the denuded female contrasted with the
clothed male.
During the same era, the scene entered Catholic decorative programs
when Raphael (1483–1520) included it among the biblical scenes depicted
at the Vatican Loggia. The Bolognese printmaker Marcantoino Raimondi
(1480–1534) made a print based on Raphael’s design. [Figure 15]
Eroticizing the scene by covering the wife’s nudity with a gauzy shift, he
augmented its transgression by adding an idol behind Joseph. His student
Properzia de Rossi (1490–1530) further popularized the scene in one of the
relief panels commissioned for the façade of San Petronio in Bologna in
1525 – 1526.^96
Depictions receded until 1610, when Ludovico Cigoli (1559–1613)
revived the theme. The same year, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1653),
daughter of Cigoli’s close colleague Orazio Gentileschi (1563–1639), com-
pleted her scandalousSusanna and the Elders. Through it, she articulated
her position as a female artist vulnerable to the exploitation of older men.^97
The naturalistic nudity of the femalefigure displays thefigure’s vulner-
ability to the lecherous old men who discuss her, ignoring her gestures of
protest. It implicates the (male) viewer in their transgression. Conversely,
Cigoli’s treatment ofJosephinverts the power dynamic of rape by asserting
the treachery of women as seductive calumnious adulteresses. [Figure 16]
He emphasizes the wife’s lechery through the loosened red garter and fallen
stocking revealing her leg, as well as traditional signs such as the fallen
slipper, indicating lost chastity, on thefloor before the raised and canopied
bed. This contrasts with the dog, signifying loyalty, hidden under Joseph’s
side of the bed. The baroque levity of the scene doublyflatters the viewer
who, identifying with Joseph, simultaneously imagines himself as sexually
irresistible and morally chaste. In contrast with Artemisia’sSusanna, where
sexuality is predicated on power, Ciglio’sJoseph and Potiphar’s Wifeoffers
amusement.
(^95) The lack of circulation of Bihzad’s painting reduces the possibility of influence East to West; the
late date of these early images reduce the possibility of Bihzad having seen early engravings
through missionaries, although this is possible.
(^96) In the collection of the Museo S. Petronio, Bologna.
(^97) Cropper, 2001 : 276. The painting is in the collection of Schloss Weissenstein, Pommersfelden.
Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife in Post-Reformation Europe 259