William de Brailes

The Flood of Noah, leaf from Bible Pictures, c.1250, Illuminated manuscript, 132 x 95 mm, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; W.106.2R, The Walters Art Museum

Not All Aboard

Commentary by Anna Somers Cocks OBE

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The animals went in two by two, hurrah, hurrah

The elephant and the kangaroo, hurrah, hurrah…

…and, as we know, jolly old Noah saves all the species from the flood with his ark.

Actually, there was nothing jolly about it at all. It was terrifying, with God so disappointed by humanity’s behaviour that He decided to destroy His own creation.

This is how the thirteenth-century English miniature painter William de Brailes imagined the devastation. The animals are innocent but they have died too because, as the fourth-century theologian John Chrysostom explains—following the Jewish commentators—they were created for humankind’s sake; therefore, it is right that they too should meet their end. God has broken the dome that according to medieval cosmology was the sky, separating the waters ‘above the firmament’ from the waters below, so the ocean above is pouring down in five cataracts.

In the Middle Ages, artists nearly always followed established prototypes, rarely deviating from them much or painting from reality. Here we have an extraordinarily original full-page painting, about the size of a paperback, with an underwater view of the Flood. The remarkable detail is the way in which the human bodies are floating on their fronts with their arms hanging down; de Brailes must have seen this in real life because that is how a corpse actually floats under water. We know that he was a bit of an individualist because he signed his work twice at a time when most artists remained anonymous, and his spirited scenes often break through the margins of his pictures.

He lived in Oxford, when the university was growing fast. The increasing numbers of religious scholars—combined with the Church’s new emphasis on personal devotion—led to demand for smaller prayer books for private clients. It was the age of the psalter, a prayer book with a selection of psalms prayed eight times a day, often preceded by pages illustrating stories from the Bible. This is one of 24 leaves in Baltimore, from a psalter now in the Stockholm National Museum [Ms. B.2010]. There are seven more leaves in Paris, and there may originally have been as many as 98.

With its piled up dead bodies this image was intended to shock, displaying the effects of humankind’s sinfulness, before the reader turned the page and saw the ark in which God decided to give creation another chance.

 

References

De Hamel, Christopher. 2001. The Book: A History of the Bible (New York: Phaidon)

Hill, Robert C. (trans.). 1990. John Chrysostom Homilies on Genesis 25:18–45, Fathers of the Church 82 (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press)

Kauffman C.M. 2003. Biblical Imagery in Medieval England 700–1500 (London: Harvey Miller)

See full exhibition for Genesis 7

Genesis 7

Revised Standard Version

7 Then the Lord said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. 2Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate; and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate; 3and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive upon the face of all the earth. 4For in seven days I will send rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.” 5And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.

6 Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth. 7And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him went into the ark, to escape the waters of the flood. 8Of clean animals, and of animals that are not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground, 9two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah. 10And after seven days the waters of the flood came upon the earth.

11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. 12And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights. 13On the very same day Noah and his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons with them entered the ark, 14they and every beast according to its kind, and all the cattle according to their kinds, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth according to its kind, every bird according to its kind, every bird of every sort. 15They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of life. 16And they that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him; and the Lord shut him in.

17 The flood continued forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. 18The waters prevailed and increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark floated on the face of the waters. 19And the waters prevailed so mightily upon the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; 20the waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. 21And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, birds, cattle, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm upon the earth, and every man; 22everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. 23He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark. 24And the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days.

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