Animals in Eden

The Fall of Man in the Early Modern Art and Literature of Germany and the Low Countries

Series: 

Author:
Paul J. Smith
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.
Copyright Year:
2025
E-Book (PDF)
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-71527-1
Publication:
26 May 2025
Hardback
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-18460-2
Publication:
05 Feb 2025
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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 (1500–1880), (Brill, 2024).
Preface and Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Abbreviations

Introduction

1 Reading and Painting God’s Book of Words and Book of Nature
 1 Animals in Genesis
 2 Biblical Typology
 3 Early Modern Natural History – Conrad Gessner
 4 Sympathy and Antipathy
 5 The Four Elements
 6 Physiologus and Bestiaries
 7 Illustrated Fable Books and the Gheeraerts Filiation
 8 Imitation

2 Rereading Dürer’s Representations of the Fall of Man
 1 Introduction
 2 Serpent, Stag, and Lion in Dürer’s 1510 Drawing
 3 The Animals in the 1504 Print
 4 Badger and Bison in the 1510 Woodcut
 5 Conclusion

3 Cranach’s Animals
 1 Cranach’s 1509 Woodcut
 2 The 1526 Courtauld Painting
 3 A Lesser Known Adam and Eve
 4 Conclusion

4 Simon de Myle: Bible, Fable, and Natural History
 1 Imitating Gheeraerts and Gessner
 2 De Myle as Critical Imitator of Gheeraerts
 3 De Myle Reading Gessner
 4 Arrangement of Animals
 5 In Conclusion: Metapictorial Reflections
 Appendix

5 Cornelis van Haarlem: Eden’s Animals in Aesopian Perspective

6 Du Bartas’ Fifth Day: Birds in the Perspective of Natural History and Biblic’al Typology
 1 Du Bartas, His Semaines and Their Afterlife
 2 Du Bartas: Natural History
 3 Ordering and Antipathy
 4 The Birds in the Seconde Semaine
 5 Maerten de Vos and the Fifth Day

7 Jan Brueghel the Elder’s First Paradise Landscape (1594)
 1 Imitating Bassano Differentially
 2 Sympathy and Antipathy
 3 The Aesopian Connection
 4 Natural History
 5 Conclusion

8 Sympathy in Eden: On Paradise with the Fall of Man by Rubens and Brueghel
 1 A Multitude of Diverse Animals
 2 Rubens’ Red Creatures
 3 The Other Animals around Adam and Eve
 4 Other Animals
 5 The White Animals in the Distance
 6 Conclusions
 Appendix

9 Eden’s Animals in Rembrandt and Vondel
 1 Rembrandt’s Dragon and Elephant
 2 Vondel’s Dragon
 3 Sympathy and Antipathy in Adam in ballingschap
 4 Conclusion

10 By Way of Conclusion: Lines of Imitation and the Animal Turn
 1 Wtewael’s Eden
 2 An Animal Turn in Eden?

General Bibliography
Index nominum
Index of Animals
This book will appeal not only to specialists in Dürer, Cranach, Jan Brueghel, Rembrandt, Du Bartas and Vondel, but also to a wide readership of art historians, literary historians, historians of science and those interested in animal studies. Keywords: Animal studies, animal symbolism, animal turn, history of science, natural history, book of nature, sympathy and antipathy, Adam and Eve, Earthly Paradise, serpent of Paradise, Ark of Noah, Dürer, Cranach, Conrad Gessner, Marcus Gheeraerts, Aesopian fable, emblematic fable, Simon de Myle, Joseph Boillot, Cornelis van Haarlem, Jan Brueghel the Elder, Joachim Wtewael, Rembrandt, Guillaume Du Bartas, Vondel, differential imitation.
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