The Deluge

c. 1508–09

Fresco · Sistine Chapel ceiling, Vatican City

One of the nine Genesis scenes Michelangelo painted on the Sistine Chapel ceiling for Pope Julius II, and among the first he finished. It is far more crowded than the scenes he painted later.

People climb a hillside at left to escape the rising water.
A group shelters under a makeshift tent at right; a small boat is about to capsize.
The ark waits in the background.
Julius first wanted apostles on the ceiling; Michelangelo proposed Old Testament scenes.

The Greeks had their own flood story: Zeus drowned a wicked humanity, and only Deucalion and Pyrrha survived to repeople the earth. Renaissance viewers saw it as a pagan echo of Noah.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain