Potiphars Wife: Josephs First Love :: Art Essays Visual

Potiphars Wife Josephs First Love Potiphars wife as seen through the eyes of Guido Reni comes to life with her soft looking pelt and tender baptismal font as she stares longingly up at Joseph. past her radiation pattern falls back into the painting as her pale contour tones coupled with swirling velvet garments around her body create a phantasmagorical setting. She is at once real and unreal. Her features are relaxed, barely her intentions are aggressive. Potiphars wife embodies the mystery Reni saw in women, exposed of being at once threatening and innocent. Joseph, like Reni, is both opposed to Potiphars wife and at the same time his eyes linger on her face in an expression of unspoken desire. When she first asks Joseph to lie with her Joseph doesnt drawback because he thinks Potiphars wife is ugly to look upon, or has had her sexuality taint by another man. Instead it is Josephs fear of Potiphars impatience that holds Joseph back. He claims that Potiphar ...neit her hath he kept back any thing from me still thee, because thou art his wife how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?(Genesis399). However, just as Josephs figure lingers in shadow in Renis painting, so too do Josephs true feelings remain cloaked behind his words and actions. ...as she spake to Joseph twenty-four hours by day...to lie by her...it came to pass about this time, that Joseph went into the house to do his business and there was none of the men of the house there within(Genesis3910-11). If Joseph is capable of running a prosperous plantation in his masters absence, and has shown the ability to turn the disadvantage of being a slave into a better life as chief overseer, why does he foolishly fall into Potiphars wifes trap? The answer is that he knows full well that entering into his masters home pull up stakes result in another encounter with Potiphars wife, and another prolong to lie in her bed. His excuse is that he has business to conduct, but as the overseer of the masters homestead there is no shortfall of men below him that he could send to do business up at the masters house. Instead Joseph repeatedly returns to Potiphars wife, denying her advances, but at the same time aroused by her flirtations. In their last(a) rendezvous Potiphars wife reaches out for Josephs garments and snags them in her hand.