The Ninth Wave is an 1850 Romanticised depiction of a large threatening wave barrelling towards the floating wreckage of a shipwreck with survivors. Russian-Armenian painter Ivan Aivazovsky portrays the power and destructiveness of nature. Yet, in the shape of the wreckage – a Christian cross – hints at the approach of dawn and a the hope of renewal.
Ivan Aivazovsky’s The Ninth Wave is in the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg.