Cain Hiding from God (Caïn fuyant la vie de Dieu après son crime)

Etching with a Biblical scene of the Genesis, illustrating the moment in which Cain is cursed from the Earth and forced to live like a vagabond, accompanied by a verse in Latin summarizing the part of the Genesis in which the story is narrated. The composition is divided in two: On the left, in the background, Adam and Eve are seen lamenting the death of Abel, whose body is seen lying down on a pasture, behind the cattle thar group near him. God, floating on a giant cloud, reproaches Cain for his crime, who is running away from him, on the right, finding his way into a forest with trees. Delaune's representation links Cain with savage nature, in contrast with the clean domestication of the cattle, gathered around his dead brother, presenting a kind of dichotomy between savageness and civilization that is common in many of the Biblical scenes created by Delaune.



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.