Potiphar's wife denouncing Joseph to Potiphar. Tempera painting by Francesco di Giorgio Martini, 146- (?).

Bible. O.T. Genesis 39.7-13. In the Bible Potiphar's wife is unnamed. In Islamic literature she is called Zuleika

"Wolfthal discusses a variety of representations of Joseph's seduction, concluding that the subject was so well favoured because it offered a kind of proof that women provoked rape, that they lied about rape--as in the biblical tale--and that charges brought by married women were not to be trusted. ... Potiphar's wife ... was thought to prove that the real problem in society was not men's sexual behaviour but women's. Wolfthal is certainly correct when she claims that Potiphar's wife was the prototype of a deceitful and lascivious married woman. In my opinion, however, it was Joseph's exemplary conduct, his knowing avoidance of seduction, which accounted for the subject's renown. He was after all considered the male counterpart to the chaste figures of Susanna and Lucretia--a fact Wolfthal fails to mention but which is essential in this context. The numerous images of Joseph and Potiphar's wife--which, in addition, were often part of a whole series on Joseph's life, and thus more about him than about her--were primarily designed to illustrate the former's purity and resolve, and as such were meant as general exhortations to moral behaviour ...." (Y. Bleyerveld, op. cit. pp. 315-316)

[Calif. 1460?]

1 painting : tempera on wood ; wood 29.6 x 40.1 cm (painted area 27.8 x 38.4 cm)

Burton B. Frederickson, The cassone paintings of Francesco di Giorgio, Malibu 1969, pp. 12-14 (on the paintings in Siena)

L. Bellosi, ed., Francesco di Giorgio e il Rinascimento a Siena 1450-1500, Milan 1993, pp. 118-119

Yvonne Bleyerveld, review of Diane Wolfthal, Images of rape: the "heroic" tradition and its alternatives (Cambridge 1999) in Simiolus, 2000-2001, vol. 28, pp. 312-316

Wellcome Collection 44816i