The Flood Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)

Description of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s painting The Flood

"The Flood" is the very fresco with which Michelangelo Buonarrotti began painting the Sistine Chapel. At first, the Italian master was unsure of his abilities and even employed skilled frescoists from Florence.

But time passed, and now Buanarotti, being dissatisfied with the work of his assistants, sends them back and continues to paint the walls himself. As in all his works, Michelangelo explores in The Flood human nature, his actions under the influence of misfortune, disasters, catastrophes, the reaction to what is happening around him. Several individual fragments add up to a whole fresco where the real tragedy unfolds. In the foreground, a group of people try to escape on a tiny piece of land, huddled together like a herd of frightened sheep.

A man tries to postpone impending doom for himself and his beloved by lifting her onto his back. The child hides in despair behind the body of his mother, who seems to have surrendered to Fate. The young man crawls along the trunk of a tree, hoping to escape death. On the right, another group takes refuge in a piece of canvas in a vain attempt to hide from the torrent of water pouring down from the sky.

A small boat sways on the restless waves, where there is a struggle for space between the distraught sufferers. And in the distance floats the Ark, with several people pounding at its walls, furiously seeking to be allowed inside and rescued from the approaching water.

The characters in the fresco behave in different ways: some cling to the last chance, climbing literally on the backs of others, some stretch out their hands to help, some are willing to throw their neighbor to the elements, in order to stretch out the extra seconds. But the only question that worries everyone, who in a moment will disappear under the water - why do they have to die and for what? But the sky is silent, and only continuous streams of water pour down on the unhappy earth.