Desperate Housewives at the Getty

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In Counter-Reformation Italy, the primary purpose of painting was to provide moral instruction. (If you think that’s old-fashioned, you haven’t been looking at all the contemporary art meant to edify today’s audience about virtuous behavior -- like, say, recycling.) The Getty Museum’s new gem of a show, ‘Captured Emotions: Baroque Painting in Bologna, 1575-1725’ concludes with a trio of pictures that demonstrate how moral guidance can also be a good excuse for a bit of painterly cheesecake.

The subject of all three canvases is the biblical tale of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. Joseph, a Hebrew sold into slavery by his brothers (nice!), is made household overseer by his new master, Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh. Potiphar’s wife, whose name is unrecorded (a telling bit of period sexism), has the hots for Joe, widely regarded as a hunk. One day, when her husband is at the office, she makes her move -- only to be rebuffed. It isn’t because she’s not something of a babe herself, but because Joseph refuses to cuckold the boss, ‘a wicked thing and sin against God.’ (Genesis 39:1-20)

Mrs. Potiphar, aghast (not to mention unfulfilled), plots her revenge. She grabs Joseph’s cloak and gives it to her husband when he gets home, as evidence that she successfully resisted Joseph’s attempt to rape her. For his virtuous behavior toward Potiphar, Joseph is rewarded by being sent directly to prison.

The End.

If that sounds vaguely like the ‘Desperate Housewives’ episode when the gardener’s sock is found under the bathtub by Eva Longoria’s husband -- well, the Getty apparently thinks so, too. The TV show makes it into a gallery wall text next to the three Baroque paintings. What’s interesting, though, is not the question of whether ABC-TV is the new Council of Trent, but how the three paintings differ from one another.

The version above by Carlo Cignani (1628-1719) is the lustiest of the bunch -- you can see the other two after the jump -- with Potiphar’s wife a fleshy, half-naked cream puff who has latched onto innocent Joseph and won’t let go. Her left arm, which reaches around behind him to grasp his shoulder and draw him near, is apparently the length of an octopus tentacle (maybe that’s why the painting is an octagon). Call me crazy...

... but although the cloak in the picture does come between them, I suspect the patron of such a painting was less interested in pondering the moral complexities of a slave protecting his master in order to maintain society’s dubious status quo, than he (definitely he) was in ogling an ample painted bosom on a sexually adventurous young woman. The splayed fingers on Joseph’s upraised hands cry ‘Eek!’ so that the ogler won’t have to.

Meanwhile, the two versions below by, first, Guido Reni (1575-1642) and second, Simone Cantarini (1612-1648) are far more chaste. Warmly yearning is followed by coldly demanding.

Reni gives the woman his patented alabaster facial swoon -- moist eyes opened wide, lips slightly parted -- and puts Joseph in a gentle shadow, framing his head as if he were an ancient Roman fresco; all the dramatic action is focused on the benign hands tussling for the robe. (Reni was a whiz with drapery, which takes up most of the painting.) Ditto Cantarini on the chastity angle -- although his stone-still wife is a vision of eternal determination, as if carved on an ancient marble relief, while angelic Joseph is a fleet-footed man of action.

The dates of the three paintings tell some of the story. Guido Reni’s and Simone Cantarini’s were made circa 1630-1640, deep within the Counter-Reformation’s second generation, while Carlo Cignani’s was painted 30 or 40 years later. It’s true that Cignani was a big fan of Correggio, the great Italian Renaissance sensualist, which partly explains why his lusty moral lesson is, shall we say, a bit lax. But it’s also true that maintaining an iron grip on virtue is a loser’s game, and time’s passage will naturally unravel the urgency with which its authority is initially charged. Cignani anticipates the evolution of the robust Baroque age into the playful Rococo era.

The other two paintings are also bigger -- each more than 4-by-5 feet -- giving them a scale that might well fit a public room.(‘Come into my library and we’ll discuss Genesis over a glass of wine.’) By contrast Cignani’s 3-foot decorative octagon is distinctly boudoir-size. And though it’s hard to tell at the Getty, I’ll bet it looks great by candlelight.

-- Christopher Knight