The Burning of Sodom

Corot is remembered for soft, silvery landscapes, so this burning biblical scene sits oddly in his work. He first showed it at the Paris Salon of 1844, where it drew little warmth. Rather than give up on it, he later took a knife to the canvas itself, cutting down the sky and the landscape at the right, then repainted the foreground in darker tones and sent it back to the Salon in 1857. By then Corot was famous, and the same picture met a much friendlier room. The story is the old one from Genesis: high in the sky an angel hurls fire down on the city, while at the left another angel hurries Lot and his two daughters to safety. Behind them Lot's wife, who looked back despite the warning, stands frozen as a pillar of salt.