Landscape with the Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah

Joachim Patinir painted this Landscape with the Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah around 1520, a subject that allowed him to depict the most dramatic possible landscape event—a civilization destroyed by divine fire and brimstone. Patinir was the first European painter to make landscape the primary subject of his paintings, using biblical or mythological narratives as pretexts for exploring vast panoramic vistas. His birds-eye perspective, receding from foreground browns through middle-distance greens to distant blue atmospheric haze, became the template for landscape painting in the Netherlands for the next century. The burning cities on the horizon—Sodom and Gomorrah—provided the dramatic narrative pretext while the real subject was the overwhelming scale and variety of the natural world. Lot and his family fleeing in the foreground are almost incidental to the landscape spectacle.

The panel demonstrates Patinir's revolutionary approach to landscape with his characteristic blue-green panoramic vista, dramatic atmospheric effects, and the cosmic scale that subordinates narrative to nature.