The Drunkenness of Noah

It might seem surprising that Michelangelo Buonarroti included the relatively rare episode of Noah’s drunkenness in his most important painting commission, along with much more theologically fundamental scenes from the book of Genesis. In the typological tradition, however, the drunken Noah is sometimes regarded as ‘a prophetic image of “Christ drunk with his passion”—a token of the “sacrament of the chalice”’—and the derision of Noah anticipates that of Christ (Wind 2000: 49–50). The adjacent images in the Sistine Chapel, the figures of the Delphic Sybil and of the prophet Joel, are also associated, respectively, with derision and the crown of thorns, and with wine and drunkards (see Wind 2000) and thus form a cluster of theological significance around this scene.

The fresco represents Noah twice: he is seen cultivating his vineyard on the left margin of the composition and lies drunk and naked on the right, in a posture unmistakably inspired by antique river gods. This is an odd choice in the early sixteenth century, when the practice of displaying subsequent events side by side in the same pictorial space—or on the same unit of pictorial surface—became archaic and was mostly avoided. In the main scene, however, the painter conflates two moments of the narrative into one image: Ham drawing his brothers’ attention to their naked father, and Shem and Japheth already hurrying to cover Noah’s exposed body.

The story seeks to explain the racial variety of humanity and—shockingly for us—the supposed hierarchy between different ethnic or racial categories. It thus makes a paradoxical demand of a painter: the three protagonists, although brothers, should already hint at the future visible distinction between their descendants. In Michelangelo’s depiction, we only see Ham from behind, making him immediately less accessible than his brothers to the viewer’s identification; and while Shem’s and Japheth’s hair is long and animated, the ancestor of Canaan sports a short, tight hairstyle—the only visual hint at the diverging future of their genealogical branches.

References

Davis, Stacy. 2008. This Strange Story: Jewish and Christian Interpretation of the Curse of Canaan from Antiquity to 1865 (Lanham: University Press of America)

Wind, Edgar. 2000. The Religious Symbolism of Michelangelo: The Sistine Ceiling, ed. by Elizabeth Sears (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

Giovanni Bellini’s Drunkenness of Noah is one of his last works, coming at the end of a long and glorious career but surprisingly opening up potential new avenues for the painter’s art. The work has sometimes been interpreted as an autobiographical contemplation on the discontents of old age. It is also Bellini’s only depiction of an Old Testament scene (Arasse 1997: 59).

The Venetian artist chose to concentrate on one narrative moment: Shem’s and Japheth’s covering of their father’s naked body, starting with the most urgent concealing of his genitals. Bellini thus leaves out the previous, crucial action: Ham’s drawing his brothers’ attention to the shameful situation of their father. Instead, he makes Ham’s role much more explicitly negative than anything the passage from Genesis implies. Here, the wayward son (as he is imagined in later traditions) both mocks Noah with a facial grimace, and seems to try to prevent his brothers from fulfilling their filial duty, holding back their hands and arms.

Bellini’s contextualization of the scene is minimal but efficient. Although the four protagonists fill almost the entire painted surface, the background represents the vineyard—hardly more than a decorative screen—and the foreground includes two still life elements concisely reminding us of the previous events: a bunch of grapes and a tilted, almost empty cup. Noah’s somewhat unconventional posture has the double advantage of exposing him to the spectator’s eyes, emphasizing the vulnerability of the drunk old man, and of making explicit his invisibility to the averted, respectful gaze of Shem and Japheth.

Bellini chose to depict the three sons with a clear difference in age. On the left, Shem is represented as a middle-aged balding man with grey beard. Meanwhile, Japheth on the right is no more than a teenager, and Ham is somewhere in between. The painter thus takes a clear position regarding what seems to be a contradiction in the biblical text: the order in which the sons are first mentioned hints at the age sequence Bellini represented, but later in the text Ham is described as Noah’s ‘youngest son’ (9:24).

The ambiguity interested commentators such as Ephrem the Syrian, who claimed the latter reference is in fact to Canaan, Ham’s son (and Noah’s grandson), which in turn might justify Canaan’s curse (vv.25–27) as the consequence of his own deeds rather than those of his father. Bellini may have not been aware of such hermeneutical niceties, but his depiction does suggest that for him Ham as the ‘youngest son’ is not to be taken literally.

References

Arasse, Daniel. 1997. Le Sujet dans le tableau: Essais d'iconographie analytique (Paris: Flammarion)

The Neapolitan Bernardo Cavallino painted Noah’s drunkenness twice, in both cases probably as a pendant to the other Old Testament story involving the drunkenness of a father: Lot and his daughters (Spinosa 2013).

The oval form of the Madrid version requires compositional creativity, and Cavallino, an indirect follower of Caravaggio, is certainly up for the task. The traditionally horizontal scene, centred on a man lying down, is here turned around; moreover, Noah’s body is strongly foreshortened and his head is positioned in the extreme foreground and in the lowest part of the painting.

Cavallino’s protagonist is without doubt Ham, the only son whose face is clearly visible and lit, and whose both hands are the most expressive actors in the drama. This can be understood as part of the Caravaggist tradition favouring the depiction of villains as more psychologically interesting than morally laudable figures; or more simply as a recognition of Ham’s responsibility in triggering the whole scene, as described in the book of Genesis. The relative invisibility of Shem’s and Japheth’s faces metonymically refers to their own insistence on not looking at their father’s nakedness.

As for Noah himself, Cavallino insists, explicitly and bluntly, on the old man’s shameful behaviour: his face has the reddish hue of a drunkard, and his genitals, not yet covered by the two respectful sons, are fully visible—particularly striking as Cavallino chose to cover most of Noah’s skin with clothes, depriving him of the possible nobility of the nude and leaving him starkly, and shockingly, half-naked. There is perhaps even an ironic pictorial reference here: the position of the old, generally virtuous Noah, fallen to degrading alcoholic stupor, could remind contemporary spectators of depictions of the altogether more spiritual ecstasy of Saint Paul’s conversion, particularly in Caravaggio’s version at Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, created just four decades earlier.

The irony is ambiguous, however: while the comparison is definitively to Noah’s disadvantage, it also partly exonerates him, his worldly drunkenness depicted as a type and shadow of the true and spiritual ecstasy of divine revelation, and thus as corresponding better with his role as an epitome of virtue in a world preceding the divine Incarnation.

References

Spinosa, Nicola. 2013. Grazia e tenerezza 'in posa': Bernardo Cavallino e il suo tempo 1616-1656 (Rome: Ugo Bozzi)