This book looks at early modern representations, both pictorial and literary, of the animals surrounding Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden at the dramatic moment of the Fall. Beginning with Albrecht Dürer's engraving Adam and Eve (1504) and ending with Rembrandt's etching Adam and Eve (1637), it explores the many manifestations of this theme at the intersection of painting, literature, and natural history. Artists such as Lucas Cranach and Jan Brueghel, and poets such as Guillaume Du Bartas and Joost van den Vondel, as well as many others, mainly from Germany and the Netherlands, are discussed.
Preface and Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Abbreviations
Introduction
1 Reading and Painting Gods Book of Words and Book of Nature
1Animals in Genesis
2Biblical Typology
3Early Modern Natural History Conrad Gessner
4Sympathy and Antipathy
5The Four Elements
6Physiologus and Bestiaries
7Illustrated Fable Books and the Gheeraerts Filiation
8Imitation
2 Rereading Dürers Representations of the Fall of Man
1Introduction
2Serpent, Stag, and Lion in Dürers 1510 Drawing
3The Animals in the 1504 Print
4Badger and Bison in the 1510 Woodcut
5Conclusion
3 Cranachs Animals
1Cranachs 1509 Woodcut
2The 1526 Courtauld Painting
3A Lesser Known Adam and Eve
4Conclusion
4 Simon de Myle: Bible, Fable, and Natural History
1Imitating Gheeraerts and Gessner
2De Myle as Critical Imitator of Gheeraerts
3De Myle Reading Gessner
4Arrangement of Animals
5In Conclusion: Metapictorial Reflections
Appendix
5 Cornelis van Haarlem: Edens Animals in Aesopian Perspective
6 Du Bartas Fifth Day: Birds in the Perspective of Natural History and
Biblical Typology
1Du Bartas, His Semaines and Their Afterlife
2Du Bartas: Natural History
3Ordering and Antipathy
4The Birds in the Seconde Semaine
5Maerten de Vos and the Fifth Day
7 Jan Brueghel the Elders First Paradise Landscape (1594)
1Imitating Bassano Differentially
2Sympathy and Antipathy
3The Aesopian Connection
4Natural History
5Conclusion
8 Sympathy in Eden: On Paradise with the Fall of Man by Rubens and Brueghel
1A Multitude of Diverse Animals
2Rubens Red Creatures
3The Other Animals around Adam and Eve
4Other Animals
5The White Animals in the Distance
6Conclusions
Appendix
9 Edens Animals in Rembrandt and Vondel
1Rembrandts Dragon and Elephant
2Vondels Dragon
3Sympathy and Antipathy in Adam in ballingschap
4Conclusion
10 By Way of Conclusion: Lines of Imitation and the Animal Turn
1Wtewaels Eden
2An Animal Turn in Eden?
General Bibliography
Index nominum
Index of Animals
Paul J. Smith is Professor Emeritus of French literature at Leiden University. He has published on French literature and on early modern natural history in relation to the visual arts and has co-edited Ichthyology in Context (15001880), (Brill, 2024).
