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 skin and volunteer face as she stares longingly up at Joseph. Then her bit capitulations back into the painting as her pale flesh tones twin with swirling velvet gar workforcets around her body create a surreal setting. She is at at once real and unreal. Her features are relaxed, but her intentions are aggressive. Potiphars wife embodies the mystery Reni saw in women, capable 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 equivocation with her Joseph doesnt drawback because he thinks Potiphars wife is ugly to look upon, or has had her sexuality tainted by another man. Instead it is Josephs fear of Potiphars wrath that holds Joseph back. He claims that Potiphar ...neither hath he kept b ack any thing from me but thee, because gravitational constant art his wife how then can I do this ample 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 day by day...to lie by her...it came to pass about this time, that Joseph went into the house to do his clientele and there was none of the men of the house there within(Genesis3910-11). If Joseph is capable of discharge a prosperous plantation in his masters absence, and has shown the force to turn the disadvantage of being a slave into a break in life as chief superintendent, why does he foolishly fall into Potiphars wifes trap? The answer is that he knows good well that entering into his masters home will reply in another encounter with Potiphars wife, and another offer 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 shortage 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 final tryst Potiphars wife reaches out for Josephs garments and snags them in her hand.