Though there are many renaissance and baroque depictions of women resisting the sexual attentions of men (Lucrezia and Tarquin, Susanna and the Elders and the Rape of the Sabines, to name just a few), this exotic Old Testament subject gave artists and patrons the opportunity to savor a familiar situation in reverse. The present very large picture was executed for Cardinal Carlo de' Medici in 1620 for the decoration of his Florentine residence, the Casino di San Marco. In later years, it became one of the most acclaimed paintings in the Medici Granducal Collections, with such melodramatic titles as "The Chastity of Joseph" or "The Flight of the Chaste Joseph."