Desire has no borders. Zhuleika—the wife of a pharaonic administrator Potiphar1—was burning in her desire to capture the beautiful body of the young servant of her husband. Joseph—the servant—did not succumb but distanced himself from the seducer. The historical folkloric story of Zhuleika’s desire has been translated into complex sign fields of painting the affective ambivalence. Ordinary household relations between the mistress of the house (Zhuleika) and the servant (Joseph) were punctuated by her demand on him to be with her. This was resisted by Joseph, who eventually escaped from such demand setting. Pictorially, the psychologically relevant details of this encounter are painted by various painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I use a selection of paintings from that period to illustrate psychological principles of affect. The message about the resistance to desire may take new forms in our twenty-first century world dominated by quick and easy condemnations of sexual misconduct through our new social media, while the slow and sturdy fortifications of social normativity prepared for that over centuries.