Private collection, Rome;

Sold Atheneum, Monte Carlo, 1979;
Private collection, Italy.

Angheli Zalapi, Matthias Stom (1600–post 1650), Doctoral dissertation: Università degli Studi di Firenze, Florence, 1997, vol. 1, pp. 60, 124–25, 218–19,  no. 10.

An important rediscovery, Matthias Stomer’s Adam and Eve was last seen on the art market nearly forty years ago. This arresting canvas features the first humans at the precise moment of their temptation: Eve reaches for the apple proffered by Satan, who has plucked the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. She will then offer it to her companion and, as a result of them having both eaten it, they will be expelled from the paradisiacal Garden of Eden and ultimately destined to die.

Stomer’s pictures are often difficult to date and so his chronology is not easy to establish. Nevertheless, the visual evidence of Adam and Eve suggests that it was painted quite early in Stomer’s prolific career, in all likelihood dating to the mid to late 1620s (but probably prior to his Roman period). The silvery light effects amplify the already voluminous and slightly unidealized forms of the figures. Their flesh is somewhat loosely painted, their hair more so; Eve’s brownish-red locks in particular correspond in execution to the schematically rendered tree leaves. These features suggest Stomer’s familiarity with a variety of Flemish and Dutch painters, particularly those in Antwerp, including Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, and Abraham Janssens, and, to a lesser extent, Dutch artists working in Utrecht and Haarlem, among them, Hendrick ter Brugghen and Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem. In effect, these locales and their resident artists relate to Stomer’s training and preliminary career.

Early on, Stomer was also receptive to Netherlandish prints, which would provide multiple points of reference for him throughout his life. Our canvas is no exception, as the composition of Adam and Eve was inspired to some extent by an engraving dated 1575 of the same subject by Johann Sadeler I (fig. 1). Both works of art share Adam’s function as a repoussoir figure and both likewise incorporate the unusual motif of depicting him seated on a rock. These affinities aside, Stomer’s portrayal of the narrative is much more subtle than that of Sadeler’s and indeed, that of many early seventeenth-century depictions of Adam and Eve.

In contrast with the figures in the engraving, which are set in a substantial beatific landscape, Stomer emphatically positions the first humans in the foreground of his picture. Their physically dominant forms and that of the legendary tree only allow for a glimpse of a relatively unadorned landscape just to the right of Eve. More significantly, Adam and Eve’s interactions with one another are set forth with gestures and expressions of tremendous subtlety. In contrast to so many other renditions of the tale in which Eve is presented as an aggressive and seductive temptress responsible, as innumerable misogynistic writers argued, for the destruction of the human race, Stomer’s Eve grasps the apple from Satan while staring vacantly ahead, as if pondering the potentially dire implications of her actions. Adam too avoids eye contact with his partner and points out into the distance beyond her. He most likely signals the denouement of this tragic event: the impending presence of God, who will condemn the pair for their transgression and consequently banish them from the Garden of Eden.

The single most remarkable motif in Stomer’s fascinating painting is the creature representing Satan, the great tempter whose offer of the apple leads to mankind’s downfall. This beast literally hangs from the tree, with the apple firmly grasped in his mouth. He also sports a long snout, large brown eyes rounded in shape and ears set back on his head. In essence, Stomer’s Satan resembles a fruit bat. While many early modern artists took imaginative liberties when depicting Satan in the Fall of Man, his appearance here is highly unusual if not unique for seventeenth-century European art. This pays testimony, as does the sophisticated narrative, to Stomer’s formidable skills of invention as an artist, which manifested themselves already in the opening years of his career.

Fig. 1. Johann Sadeler I, Temptation of Adam, 1579, engraving, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The artwork described above is subject to changes in availability and price without prior notice.