The Angel of the Lord driving Adam and Eve out of Paradise (L'Ange du Seigneur chassant Adam et Eve du Paradis)

Etching with a Biblical scene of the Genesis in which Adam and Eve are driven out of Paradise by the Angel of the Lord. The illustration shows Adam and Eve, dressed in clothes made up of animal skin, running away from a cherube that, flying on a strip of clouds, stirs a fire aword against them. A strip of palm trees forms a kind of barrier between the terrestrial world, on the left, and the Garden of Eden, to the right. The trees closer to the first plane are covered with more foliage, and they seem to be dying as they go further in the background, possibly signifying a metaphor of the new deadly condition of man. Between the first two trees, the tree of life in the Garden of Eden can be seen. Between the legs of Eve is a hare, running on the same direction at she does, symbolizing the fright of the two characters. This print is likely a reversed copy of a signed print by Étienne Delaune with the same print, and its composition is closely related to a print created by Bernard Salomon on the same subject, illustrating the historical scenes of the Bible.



The scene is part of a set of 36 prints illustrating the history of the Genesis, all with an inscription in Latin with the Biblical verse of the scene or a short summary of the passage with the story, under the lower margin of the thin, rectangular frame containing the scene. The succession of episodes in this set is somewhat chaotic, as only three plates illustrate the history of Creation, while six are consecrated to the history of Adam and Eve, and with striking breaks in the narration. The existence of more complete sets of drawings by Delaune on the same subject suggest that he might have intended more plates to illustrate the history of the Genesis in a more thorough manner, although the prints are yet to be found. Many of these prints represent, simultaneously, two or more episodes separated in time, following the 16th century tradition, inherited from the Middle Ages. Most of them are also inspired on the engravings by Bernard Salomon, created to illustrate the "Quadrins historiques de la Bible" (Historical Biblical Scenes) by Claude Paradin, first published in Lyon in 1553.