The Expulsion from Paradise, Cornelis van Poelenburch, after c. 1646 – (Cornelis Van Poelenburch) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Cornelis Van Poelenburch

Date: 1646

Size: 30 x 38 cm

Technique: Oil On Panel

Although Van Poelenburch’s small Italianate landscapes are often populated with classical gods, pastoral scenes or bathers, he uses them in more than a third of his oeuvre as a setting for religious subjects. Here the angel is expelling Adam and Eve from the lush hills of paradise, where cows are grazing, into a barren landscape. Van Poelenburch’s figures are often formulaic, and they often seem to have been reused in his vast production of cabinet pieces. This is illustrated by the figure of Eve, which reoccurs in a similar position as a bather hastily covering herself when taken by surprise by a shepherd spying on her in a picture of Apollo and Daphne.10 It has been suggested that the figure of Eve looking over her shoulder while shamefully covering herself with her hair, is based on a print of the same subject by Philips Galle.11 However, the similarities are too generic to conclude that Van Poelenburch based his Eve on the engraving. Her body is turned towards the left and more towards the viewer, and the positions of her legs and head are also different. The iconography of the present composition diverges from the story as told in Genesis, where God expels Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden and stations a cherubim with a sword that whirled and flashed to block the entrance to the tree of life. However, it follows a visual tradition predominant in Italy but also common in the north in which the cherubim expels the first man and woman from paradise with a flaming sword.12 The plump figures of Adam and Eve, the subdued colours and the soft contours in the landscape are characteristic of Van Poelenburch’s work after his return to Utrecht around 1627.13 As discussed in the entry on Van Poelenburch’s Satyrs Peeping at Nymphs (SK-A-313) it is difficult to date paintings produced during the remaining 40 years of his life, as there is little stylistic development. However, the dendrochronology of the present panel has established a terminus post quem for its execution of 1646. In 1809, when the museum acquired the 137 paintings from the Van Heteren collection en bloc it included two expulsions from paradise by Van Poelenburch. One was on Hoet’s list of the collection in 1752, and was thus likely to have been bought by Hendrik van Heteren in the first half of the 18th century.14 The second Expulsion does not feature in that list, so it must have been bought by Hendrik’s son, Adriaan Leonard. The museum de-accessioned one of the two expulsions at auction in 1828.15 As the measurements and subjects of both paintings was identical, it has not been possible to determine with certainty which one was sold. A signed copy of the present painting was sold at auction in 1984.16 Taco Dibbits, 2007 See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 242.