Loggia di raffaello, 04, 04

The elderly Lot leads his daughters away from the destruction of Sodom, their heads bowed in grief and exhaustion. Behind them, a ghostly white figure depicts his wife, who looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt according to the biblical narrative. In the distance, the city walls are engulfed in thick smoke and flames under a hazy sky.

This scene illustrates the Neoplatonic moral caution against turning back toward the material world—represented by the burning city of sensory corruption—once the soul has begun its ascent. Additionally, the transformation into salt resonates with the later chemical philosophy of the tria prima, where salt represents the fixed, material principle of existence.