The depravity of mankind before the flood (Genesis 6:5-8; Matt. 24:37-39)

The subject — human depravity before the Flood as described in Genesis 6, echoed in Matthew 24 — gave Cornelis van Haarlem an Old Testament and New Testament paired framework for depicting sensual excess and moral degradation. The 1615 panel in the Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, belongs to a group of moral-theological subjects Cornelis explored in his later career, drawing on the biblical narrative as justification for depicting scenes of carousing, violence, and sexual licence that would otherwise be inadmissible. The antediluvian world — characterised in Genesis by wickedness and violence — was a recognised pretext for depicting human vice in visual abundance, and Cornelis exploits it to show figures feasting, fighting, and coupling in a manner that uses religious narrative as a vehicle for genre-inflected moral commentary. The Matthew reference connecting pre-Flood behaviour to the Second Coming gives the subject contemporary eschatological weight.

Panel with Cornelis's mid-to-late career handling. The moral subject requires a compositional organisation that displays vice without glamorising it — Cornelis uses a dense arrangement of figures in varied states of abandon with compositional emphasis on the consequences and expressions of excess. Warm earthy tones dominate, fitting the subject's sensual context.