Story of Noah
Who is farming in the background?
Sistine Chapel ceiling
As with the first sequence of pictures, the three panels concerning Noah, taken from the sixth to ninth chapters of Genesis are thematic rather than chronological. In the first scene is shown the sacrifice of a sheep. Vasari, in writing about this scene mistakes it for the sacrifices by Cain and Abel, in which Abel's sacrifice was acceptable to God and Cain's was not. What this image almost certainly depicts is the sacrifice made by the family of Noah, after their safe deliverance from the Great Flood which destroyed the rest of Humankind. The central, larger, scene shows the Great Flood. The Ark in which Noah's family escaped floats at the rear of the picture while the rest of humanity tries frantically to scramble to some point of safety. This picture, which has a large number of figures, conforms the most closely to the format of the paintings that had been done around the walls. The final scene is the story of Noah's drunkenness. After the Flood, Noah tills the soil and grows vines. He is shown doing so, in the background of the picture. He becomes drunk and inadvertently exposes himself. His youngest son, Ham, brings his two brothers Shem and Japheth to see the sight but they discreetly cover their father with a cloak. Ham is later cursed by Noah and told that the descendants of Ham's son Canaan will serve Shem and Japheth's descendants forever. Taken together, these three pictures serve to show that Humankind had moved a long way from God's perfect creation. However, it is through Shem and his descendants, the Israelites, that Salvation will come to the world. Since Michelangelo executed the nine Biblical scenes in reverse chronological order, some analyses of the frescoes of the vault commence with the "Drunkenness of Noah". Tolnay's Neoplatonic interpretation sees the story of Noah at the beginning and the act of Creation by God as the conclusion of the process of "deificatio" and the return from physical to spiritual being.