Sinners before the Flood

Sinners before the Flood — a related subject to the Before the Deluge canvases that Cornelis van Haarlem produced in the 1610s — appears here in an earlier version from 1594, in the Hermitage Museum, demonstrating that the antediluvian moral subject occupied him across two decades of his career. The earlier 1594 version likely reflects a more directly Mannerist approach to the subject — more dynamic figure positions, more emphatic tonal contrasts — compared with the more measured 1615 versions. The Hermitage canvas entered the collection through the Russian imperial acquisitions that brought significant numbers of northern European Mannerist and Baroque works to Saint Petersburg from the late eighteenth century onward. The moral-theological framework of the subject permitted Cornelis to deploy the full range of his figure-painting skills in depicting humanity's most extreme departures from virtue, creating a work simultaneously didactic in purpose and sensually engaging in pictorial effect.

Canvas with Cornelis's 1590s Mannerist handling — more dynamic and contorted figure positions than his later 1615 antediluvian works. The composition organises transgressive activities across a multi-figure surface lit with the warm tones of dissipation. Tonal contrast is used more dramatically than in the later versions, reflecting the more intense Mannerist phase of his career.