Scene of the Flood

Scene of the Flood is a large oil-on-canvas painting by Anne-Louis Girodet, first shown at the Salon of 1806. It presents a family of five struggling against a storm: a man clinging to a rock hangs from a tree that is beginning to snap, holding up his wife and two children while carrying an elderly man on his back, who still grips a purse. Lightning streaks the sky, and a corpse drifts in the churning water. The scene mixes Neoclassical clarity of composition with a pursuit of the sublime and the emotional intensity that would define Romanticism. Although critics compared it to Poussin's Flood, Girodet insisted it was not a biblical subject, describing instead a sudden, partial inundation. Many interpreters read it as a political allegory, with the social storm of the Revolution and the rotten tree possibly pointing to Napoleon, the support on which the family depends. Critics were divided, yet the work won first prize at the 1810 décennal competition and is now regarded as one of Girodet's finest achievements.

Painter

Anne-Louis Girodet

Date

1806

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

442 × 341 cm

Museum

Louvre Museum, Paris

Movement

Neoclassicism

Genre

nude

Depicts

wind wave, woman, child, storm, pain, family, man

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