The Expulsion from Paradise
The Expulsion
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Jakob von Wil's dance of death in Lucerne
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Holbein: The Expulsion (August 1524)
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dam and Eve are driven out of Paradise. According to Catholic (and Lutheran) doctrine, Adam and Eve
were immortal before the Temptation and Fall. See the page about the Original Sin.
Death is waiting outside.
It's odd that Adam and Eve are naked, when the Bible clearly says,
»Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them«
(Genesis 3,21).
Holbein has inspired the dance of death in Lucerne from 1610. Jakob von Wil also starts
the dance with an angel with a flaming sword driving Adam and Eve out of Paradise,
where they are greeted by Death. Notice the apple in Eve's hand.
The scenes from The Old Testament are not included in the Holbein's dance of death alphabet,
but back in 1524 Holbein had designed an alphabet with themes from the book of Genesis cut in metal (picture to the right).
Icones Historiarum Veteris Testamenti: Genesis chap. 2 & 3
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Icones Historiarum Veteris Testamenti: Abraham and the angel
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Holbein also produced a series of illustrations for The Old Testament.
under the name Historiarum veteris instrumenti Icones ad vivum expressae.
The publishers included the first four pictures from the dance of death:
Creation,
Temptation and Fall,
the Expulsion from Paradise and
Life After the Fall.
The picture to the right is from a 1547 edition.
A little later in the same book there's a picture of the angel of the Lord preventing
Abraham from sacrificing Isaac. This angel looks like the
angel that chases Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden.
The angel also looks like
the angel that killed 185,000 of Sennacherib's men.
Variations: Aldegrever, as he is wont to, makes a free interpretation,
and Eberhard Kieser copies Aldegrever.
Birckmann reduces the angel, takes the sword sheath away from the angel, lets Death use a bow for his instrument, designs a deer
behind Adam and a goat at the frame of the picture.
Hollar and Deuchar follow Birckmann, but Valvasor doesn't.
Various Artists
(1552)
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(1552)
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Maundeville (1580)
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Pine oc Død (1587)
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Dances of death
Holbein's dance of death
The Expulsion
