Cornelis van Poelenburch

The Expulsion from Paradise (Genesis 3:23-24)

after c. 1646

Inscriptions

  • signature, lower right, with monogram:C·P·

Technical notes

The support is a single horizontally grained oak plank bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1633. The panel could have been ready for use by 1646, but a date in or after 1652 is more likely. The paint layers were applied over a white ground and consist of smooth opaque paint, with details sometimes applied with glazes. This has resulted in a glossy and polished surface.

Scientific examination and reports

  • technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 3 december 2002
  • dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 11 juni 2003

Condition

Good.

Provenance

...; ? sale, Cornelis Wittert van Valkenburg (1672-1733), Rotterdam (auction house not known), 11 April 1731, no. 48 (‘Adam en Eva uit het Paradys verdreven, [...], h. 12d, Br. 15d [31 x 38.5 cm]’), ? to Hendrik van Heteren (1672-1749), The Hague;1Jonckheere 2005, p. 265, no. 48. ? his collection;2Moes/Van Biema 1909, p. 192. ? his son, Adriaan Leonard van Heteren (1724-1800), The Hague (‘Een stuk, verbeeldende Adam en Eva, werdende door den Engel uit het Paradijs gedreven, [...], h. 11 en drie vierde d., br. 14 en een half d. [30.7 x 37.9 cm] P.’);3Coll. cat. Van Heteren 1752, p. 458. his third cousin and godson, Adriaan Leonard van Heteren Gevers (1794-1866), Rotterdam, ? (‘Adam et Eve chassé du Paradis, bois, h. 11½ l. 14½ [30.1 x 37.9 cm]’), or ? (‘Mème sujet mais d’une ordonnance differente, bois, h. 11¾ l. 14 [30.7 x 36.6 cm]’);4Coll. cat. Gevers 1808, p. 149, no. 79 or no. 80. from whom, fl. 100,000, with 136 other paintings en bloc (known as the ‘Kabinet van Heteren Gevers’), to the museum, by decree of Louis Napoleon, King of Holland, and through the mediation of his father Dirk Cornelis Gevers (1763-1839), 8 June 18095Verroen 1985, p. 17, notes 2, 3.

ObjectNumber: SK-A-312

The artist

Biography

Cornelis van Poelenburch (Utrecht 1594/95 - Utrecht 1667)

Van Poelenburch’s date of birth can be established on the basis of a document dated 21 January 1601 stating that he was six years old at the time. He was the son of Simon van Poelenburch (d. 1596), a Roman Catholic canon of Utrecht Cathedral. According to Von Sandrart, Van Poelenburch trained with Abraham Bloemaert. By 1617 he was in Rome, where he signed a poem in the album amicorum of Wybrand de Geest. He was one of the founding members of the Schildersbent (Band of Painters) where he adopted the sobriquet ‘Satiro’, evidently bestowed on him because of the subjects of many of his pictures. Van Poelenburch’s earliest known works are two drawings dated 1619, which according to their inscription ‘te tievele’, were drawn in the Tiburtine hills.6Edinburgh, The National Gallery of Scotland; Germany, private collection; illustrated in Chong 1987, p. 24, nos. 1-2, pls. 1-2. His first dated painting, the View of the Campo Vaccino is from 1620.7Paris, Louvre; illustrated in Sluijter-Seijffert 1984, p. 242, fig. 1. According to Von Sandrart, Van Poelenburch was also in Florence, where he was employed by Cosimo II, Grand Duke of Tuscany. He is recorded in Rome in 1622, but it is not known how long he remained in Italy. On 6 April 1627 he is recorded for the first time back in Utrecht, where he negotiated the purchase of one of his pictures, the Banquet of the Gods, by the States of Utrecht.8Dessau, Schloss Georgium; Sluijter-Seijffert 1984, p. 226, no. 21. Two years later he married Jacomina van Steenre. According to an inscription on a drawing of the Bastille he was in Paris in 1631.9Paris, Bibliothèque nationale; illustrated in Chong 1987, p. 25, no. 9, pls. 6a-6b. He lived in London from 1637 to 1641, returning to Utrecht at least once in 1638. Later in his career he held prominent positions in the Utrecht Guild of St Luke (warden in 1656, dean in 1657-58 and 1664). He was buried in the city’s Magdalena Kerk on 12 August 1667.

Van Poelenburch received commissions from important patrons, amongst whom Frederick V, Elector of the Palatinate, and Charles I of England. Together with Abraham Bloemaert, Herman Saftleven and Dirck van der Lisse, he worked on four scenes from Guarini’s Il pastor fido for Stadholder Frederik Hendrik at Honselaarsdijk (c. 1633), and Frederik Hendrik owned 12 paintings by him, the largest number by a single artist. His most important patron was fellow townsman Willem Vincent, Baron van Wyttenhorst, for whom he painted at least 55 cabinet pieces.

Van Poelenburch is considered to be one of the first Italianate painters and his work had a profound influence on the generation that came after him. Throughout his career he painted cabinet pieces of Italianate landscapes with mythological or religious subjects, or populated with pastoral figures and bathers. Almost exclusively on copper or panel, their painted surfaces have a porcelain smoothness. Several portraits by his hand are known, also in a small format. On several occasions Van Poelenburch painted the figures in the work of other artists, such as Alexander Keirincx, Jan Both, Bartholomeus van Bassen, Dirck van Delen and Hendrik Steenwijck II.

Houbraken is the first to record Van Poelenburch’s pupils: Dirck van der Lisse (1607-69), Daniel Vertangen (1598-1681/84), Johan van Haensbergen (1642-1705), Toussaint Gelton (c. 1630-80), François Verwilt (c. 1620-91), Warnard van Rysen (c. 1625-after 1665) and the otherwise unknown Willem van Steenree. Their work is often so close to that of their master that it is hard to tell apart, particularly when signed with Van Poelenburch’s monogram. Jan Gerritsz van Bronckhorst (c. 1603-61) made a number of prints after Van Poelenburch’s designs.

Taco Dibbits, 2007

References
De Bie 1661, pp. 256-57; Von Sandrart 1675 (1925), p. 175; Houbraken I, 1718, pp. 128-30; Sluijter-Seijffert 1984, pp. 25-36, 249-58 (documents); Bok 1985; Chong 1987, pp. 3-14; Schatborn in Amsterdam 2001, pp. 57-65; Boers 2004 (with transcribed inventory of the collection of Willem Vincent, Baron van Wyttenhorst)

Entry

Although Van Poelenburch’s small Italianate landscapes are often populated with classical gods, pastoral scenes or bathers, he uses them in more than a third of his oeuvre as a setting for religious subjects. Here the angel is expelling Adam and Eve from the lush hills of paradise, where cows are grazing, into a barren landscape. Van Poelenburch’s figures are often formulaic, and they often seem to have been reused in his vast production of cabinet pieces. This is illustrated by the figure of Eve, which reoccurs in a similar position as a bather hastily covering herself when taken by surprise by a shepherd spying on her in a picture of Apollo and Daphne.10Sale, London (Sotheby’s), 4 April 1984, no. 168. It has been suggested that the figure of Eve looking over her shoulder while shamefully covering herself with her hair, is based on a print of the same subject by Philips Galle.11TIB LVI, 1987, p. 11, no. 2; Van de Kamp in Amsterdam 1991b, p. 210, no. 2. However, the similarities are too generic to conclude that Van Poelenburch based his Eve on the engraving. Her body is turned towards the left and more towards the viewer, and the positions of her legs and head are also different.

The iconography of the present composition diverges from the story as told in Genesis, where God expels Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden and stations a cherubim with a sword that whirled and flashed to block the entrance to the tree of life. However, it follows a visual tradition predominant in Italy but also common in the north in which the cherubim expels the first man and woman from paradise with a flaming sword.12See for example Peeter van der Borcht’s illustration in the Imagines et figurae bibliorum of the 1580s, which was still popular in the 17th century; Hollstein 2005, p. 7, no. 242.

The plump figures of Adam and Eve, the subdued colours and the soft contours in the landscape are characteristic of Van Poelenburch’s work after his return to Utrecht around 1627.13Sluijter-Seijffert 1984, p. 90. As discussed in the entry on Van Poelenburch’s Satyrs Peeping at Nymphs (SK-A-313) it is difficult to date paintings produced during the remaining 40 years of his life, as there is little stylistic development. However, the dendrochronology of the present panel has established a terminus post quem for its execution of 1646.

In 1809, when the museum acquired the 137 paintings from the Van Heteren collection en bloc it included two expulsions from paradise by Van Poelenburch. One was on Hoet’s list of the collection in 1752, and was thus likely to have been bought by Hendrik van Heteren in the first half of the 18th century.14See Provenance. The second Expulsion does not feature in that list, so it must have been bought by Hendrik’s son, Adriaan Leonard. The museum de-accessioned one of the two expulsions at auction in 1828.15Anonymous sale, Amsterdam (Roos), 4 August 1828, no. 101. At the same auction the museum also sold two other pictures by Van Poelenburch from the Van Heteren collection: a St Mary Magdalen (no. 102) and a Bacchus, Ceres, Venus and Cupid with Putti (no. 103). As the measurements and subjects of both paintings was identical, it has not been possible to determine with certainty which one was sold.

A signed copy of the present painting was sold at auction in 1984.16Anonymous sale, London (Christie’s), 15 June 1984, no. 101.

Taco Dibbits, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 242.

Literature

Sluijter-Seijffert 1984, pp. 90, 101, 228, no. 43; Verroen 1985, p. 47, no. 108; Van de Kamp in Amsterdam 1991b, p. 210, no. 2

Collection catalogues

1809, p. 54, no. 235 or 236; 1843, p. 46, no. 242 (‘in good condition’); 1853, p. 22, no. 215 (fl. 500); 1858, p. 108, no. 240; 1880, pp. 244-45, no. 273; 1887, p. 133, no. 1120; 1903, p. 211, no. 1893; 1934, p. 225, no. 1893; 1976, p. 448, no. A 312; 2007, no. 242

Citation

T. Dibbits, 2007, 'Cornelis van Poelenburch, The Expulsion from Paradise (Genesis 3:23-24), after c. 1646', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5061

(accessed 11 May 2025 17:32:23).

Footnotes

  • 1Jonckheere 2005, p. 265, no. 48.
  • 2Moes/Van Biema 1909, p. 192.
  • 3Coll. cat. Van Heteren 1752, p. 458.
  • 4Coll. cat. Gevers 1808, p. 149, no. 79 or no. 80.
  • 5Verroen 1985, p. 17, notes 2, 3.
  • 6Edinburgh, The National Gallery of Scotland; Germany, private collection; illustrated in Chong 1987, p. 24, nos. 1-2, pls. 1-2.
  • 7Paris, Louvre; illustrated in Sluijter-Seijffert 1984, p. 242, fig. 1.
  • 8Dessau, Schloss Georgium; Sluijter-Seijffert 1984, p. 226, no. 21.
  • 9Paris, Bibliothèque nationale; illustrated in Chong 1987, p. 25, no. 9, pls. 6a-6b.
  • 10Sale, London (Sotheby’s), 4 April 1984, no. 168.
  • 11TIB LVI, 1987, p. 11, no. 2; Van de Kamp in Amsterdam 1991b, p. 210, no. 2.
  • 12See for example Peeter van der Borcht’s illustration in the Imagines et figurae bibliorum of the 1580s, which was still popular in the 17th century; Hollstein 2005, p. 7, no. 242.
  • 13Sluijter-Seijffert 1984, p. 90.
  • 14See Provenance.
  • 15Anonymous sale, Amsterdam (Roos), 4 August 1828, no. 101. At the same auction the museum also sold two other pictures by Van Poelenburch from the Van Heteren collection: a St Mary Magdalen (no. 102) and a Bacchus, Ceres, Venus and Cupid with Putti (no. 103).
  • 16Anonymous sale, London (Christie’s), 15 June 1984, no. 101.