"Chaos (The Creation)"

The chaos to which the title refers is, of course, that from which the Christian God created the world, depicted here as an act of commanding the natural elements to take form and submit to the divine presence. Whether  pandering to literal-minded taste or reflecting his own genuine belief, the artist create a painting that was something of a blockbuster hit  and proved to Aivazovsky that the sublime sells in the right context.

The lower half of the painting shows early signs of Aivazovsky's extraordinary technical competence in painting stormy seas. In Chaos (The Creation), the upper half of the painting suggests a painter still trying to decide what to do with that competence, with his own God-like command of his materials, and whether his attachment to Romanticism required a glorification of something more than nature's own powers.