The Flood

The ark is almost an afterthought here, a shape far off in the distance. What fills the canvas are the people left behind. On a rock at the right a naked man throws up his arms, and all around him figures try to haul themselves out of the rising water. Antonio Carracci painted it in Rome in his last years, probably around 1616 to 1618. Its first recorded owner was an abbot named Gavotti in Bologna, and around 1645 Cardinal Mazarin, the Italian-born chief minister of France, acquired it in Rome for his collection. When Mazarin died in 1661 the picture passed to the young Louis XIV and hung for a time at Versailles. It has been on public view in the Louvre since the museum opened in 1793 and now hangs in the Grande Galerie.