Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Chaos.
The gallery
Chaos
George Frederic Watts, c. 1875
A visionary oil painting from Watts's allegorical cycle 'The House of Life', imagining the primordial state before order: titanic elemental figures heave out of fire and vapour as the world struggles into being. This version, executed by Watts with his studio assistants, is held by Tate, London.
Chaos
Maestro Bartolomé, after 1493
A panel from the Ciudad Rodrigo altarpiece imagines the primordial void before creation — Chaos as swirling disorder from which the ordered world will emerge, now in the University of Arizona Museum of Art.
The Creation of the World (Orbis fabrica)
Antonio Tempesta, 1606
Tempesta's Met etching for Ovid opens with the world drawn out of formless Chaos — earth, sea, and sky separating as the first metamorphosis of all.