Le Déluge

When Michelangelo climbed the scaffold in 1508 to begin the Sistine ceiling for Pope Julius II, this flood scene was the first of the nine Genesis stories he tackled. You can tell it was first. The panel is crowded with small figures scrambling up a shrinking hill, sheltering under a makeshift tent, hauling their belongings from the rising water, while a distant ark rides it out. From the chapel floor, more than 60 feet down, all that busy detail reads as clutter. Michelangelo learned the lesson quickly. In the panels he painted afterward the figures grow larger and fewer, until a single reaching arm can carry a whole scene. Early on, damp even brought a bloom of mould across part of this fresco, and a section had to be redone.