The seventeenth century in the Netherlands saw an explosion of artistic talent and development. The increasingly wealthy middle class bought paintings, prints, and furnishings for their homes. Artists scrambled to meet the demand, and tended to specialize in still life, flower painting, portraiture, history painting, genre scenes (scenes of daily life), landscapes and marinescapes. Mans was a landscape and figure painter who created numerous small pictures of towns, villages, and coast scenes. About his life nothing is known except that he probably lived and worked in Utrecht. The signature "FMANS" may be seen in the lower right corner. However, a Haarlem painter of summer and winter canal and city landscapes, Thomas Heeremans, who also lived during the latter half of the 17thc., signed his paintings, "THMANS." It is quite possible that the signature on the Davenport painting may indeed be read as "TH" and that this is the work of Thomas Heeremans not Fredericus Mans.

Mezzotint refers to a tonal rather than linear engraving process that was developed in the 17th century. The plate is first worked over with a serrated "rocker," raising a burr over the surface to hold the ink and print as a soft dark tone. The composition is then created in lighter tones by scraping out and burnishing areas of the roughened plate so that they hold less ink or none at all. Details may be added by further engraving or etching. Martin is best known as a landscape painter who specialized in large, melodramatic, epic paintings depicting scenes from Milton's Paradise Lost or scenes from the Bible such as this one described in Genesis 7 and 8. Martin's paintings are usually crowded with hundreds of figures and convey a sense of great distance. In this composition Noah's ark can be seen in the far distance to the right. His work profoundly influenced the American landscapist Thomas Cole. Martin, however, was also a superb mezzotint engraver. Martin frequently made large plate mezzotints after his own paintings, slightly altering the original composition. This rare mezzotint of The Deluge was based upon Martin's large oil on canvas which is now lost. Both the painting and the mezzotint were exhibited together at the Royal Academy, London, in 1829. Martin considered the painting to be one of the most important of his career and it became his favorite work. The mezzotint was an enormous popular and financial success and was originally accompanied by an eight-page pamphlet describing the scenes and events in the composition.