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Auction: 390 - Renaissance Plaquettes and Commemorative Medals featuring the Neil A. Goodman Collection - e-Auction
Lot: 178

FRENCH or GERMAN, 17th Century
Fall of Man and Expulsion from Paradise. Rectangular plaquette. Bronze, 215 x 83mm. At the center, Satan in the form of a zoomorphic serpent, wraps himself around a tree and proffers the forbidden fruit; Eve standing left offers Adam, reclining before her, the forbidden fruit; to the right, the Archangel Michael, acting as an instrument of God's wrath, expels Adam and Eve from Paradise as the skeletal figure of Death escorts them. The plaquette's composition exists in four recorded specimens, each differing from the other in size and various details, vide Morgenroth 415. The Morgenroth specimen, at 74 x 54mm, is much smaller than the example here and does not contain the skeletal figure of Death escorting Adam and Eve. In the field above Adam's outstretched arm, an apparent inscription has been effaced and unfortunately made illegible.
The figural arrangement of the Temptation of Adam is also replicated in a frescoed vault at the church of St. Nicolas des Champs in Paris, painted between 1640-50 by Michel Corneille the Elder [1601-1664]. At the Vatican, this same scene is depicted as the sixth in the chronological order of the narrative, The Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden, is found in the large field of the vault of the second bay, between the triangular spandrels.
Michelangelo's rendering (c. 1509/10) is considered a bolder and more momentous step towards a clearer depiction of the Fall of Adam and the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden. It has been noted in his composition, whose central features bear striking similarities to the present plaquette, that the three pilasters, the fallen pair to the left, the pair expelled from Paradise to the right, and the anthropomorphized tree of knowledge with the female tempter in the center (the Tree of Life before the Fall), join arms at the top to form the letter M in uncial script. Was this intended to be Michelangelo's own signature? To the left, the profusion of the Garden of Eden is indicated by a few details, but even among these a barren stump thrusts up its branches beside the archetypal female. To the right, total desolation surrounds the human couple.
The rhythm of the whole composition flows from left to right. Eve grasps the apple boldly, Adam greedily, but in misfortune he seems greater than the woman. He knows that through his fall God, who was near to him, has become inaccessible and remote. He almost disdains the garden of which he feels no longer worthy. Good and Evil have divided and become a dual power. Slight bend at far right, lower edge. An Extremely Fine and impressive old cast. Very Rare.
From the Neil A. Goodman Collection

Sold for
$11,500

Starting price
$7000