Artwork
The expulsion from paradise (Genesis 3: 22-24)
The expulsion from paradise (Genesis 3: 22-24) is an oil painting by the Early Baroque Italian artist Michiel Coxie. It dates from 1566 and is held in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Completed in 1566, the oil painting *The Expulsion from Paradise* portrays the biblical episode from Genesis 3:22‑24.
About this work
Overview
Flemish artist Michiel Coxie presents Adam and Eve, newly aware of their nakedness, being driven from Eden amid a verdant forest.
Completed in 1566, the oil painting *The Expulsion from Paradise* portrays the biblical episode from Genesis 3:22‑24. Flemish artist Michiel Coxie presents Adam and Eve, newly aware of their nakedness, being driven from Eden amid a verdant forest. The composition includes a celestial being in pink robes holding a luminous object and a peacefully reclining lion, all rendered with pronounced light and shadow.
Subject & Meaning
The work visualizes humanity’s first loss of innocence, emphasizing the contrast between the natural world and divine prohibition. Adam reaches upward, perhaps toward the forbidden fruit, while Eve clasps her hands in a gesture of remorse. The angelic figure, hovering above the trees, symbolizes the divine guard preventing re‑entry, and the lion’s calm presence introduces an element of natural order persisting beyond the fall.
Technique & Style
Coxie employs a chiaroscuro scheme that models the figures with strong highlights against a darker forest backdrop, creating a three‑dimensional effect. The brushwork combines the clarity of Renaissance composition with early Baroque dynamism, inviting comparison to Raphael’s balanced forms while anticipating the dramatic lighting later favored by Baroque masters.
History & Provenance
After a career spanning altarpieces and portraiture across Flanders, Coxie served as court painter to Emperor Charles V and later to King Philip II of Spain. *The Expulsion from Paradise* entered the collection of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, where it remains part of the museum’s holdings of Northern Renaissance and early Baroque works.
Context
The painting reflects the cross‑currents of mid‑16th‑century art, where Northern artists absorbed Italian influences while retaining their own narrative detail. Coxie’s synthesis of Flemish realism with Italianate composition situates the work within the early Baroque period, a time when religious subjects were rendered with heightened emotional intensity and technical virtuosity.
Artist & collection
Artist
Michiel Coxie the Elder, Michiel Coxcie the Elder or Michiel van Coxcie, Latinised name Coxius (1499 – 3 March 1592), was a Flemish painter of altarpieces and portraits, a draughtsman and a designer of stained-glass windows, tapestries and…
