Expulsion from the Garden of Eden

This very impressive modello was created by Rubens as a design for the painting decoration of the Jesuit church in Antwerp in 1620. The theme is based on the Old Testament Book of Genesis: a cherub with a fiery sword is expelling the sinful original ancestors from the gates of Eden right to the open arms of death. The planned cycle, whose part the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden was to be, included thirty-nine canvases drawing on the Old and New Testaments. However, this scene was left out of the programme of the decoration at the last moment by the Prior of the church, so that it had never been executed in the large size. Rubens´s ceiling paintings in the Jesuit church met a sad fate, for in 1718 all of them were ruined by fire.