Joseph and Potiphar's Wife

Sarah Stanley (born Sloane, ca. 1709-1764) was the eldest daughter of Sir Hans Sloane, the seventeenth-century physician and collector whose large collection formed the basis of the British Museum and the Natural History Museum. Sloane travelled to Jamaica and eventually married Elizabeth Langley Rose, the heiress to a Jamaican plantation, in 1695. Their fortune from Jamaica funded Sloane’s collecting. Sarah would have grown up in Sloane’s home, which was filled with art, plants, gemstones, coins, antiquities, and other curiosities and gave her unparalleled access to works of art. She began copying works in Sloane’s collection as a teenager—including portraits by Rosalba Carriera and Hilliard’s Unknown Man Clasping A Hand From A Cloud, now in the collection of the V&A. Her style suggests Stanley may have taken further lessons with the miniature painter Bernard Lens. This miniature was most likely painted after a version of Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife by Carlo Cignani or someone in his circle.