Expulsion from Paradise

Entry

This wooden medallion shows a carved scene of the archangel Gabriel driving Adam and Eve out of Paradise. Overtaken with shame, the two fleeing figures attempt to cover their nakedness with their hands. In his right hand, Adam still holds the apple causing the Fall of Man. The Antwerp wood quality mark – the hand – has been punched into the medallion’s raised border at the bottom. A retable group with the Creation of Eve, preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum,¹ bearing the same mark, is strikingly similar in terms of style. The thick-set corporeal forms with bulging lower abdomens in the two groups are virtually identical. Also similar is the execution of the hair, with Adam’s curls in both cases contrasting with Eve’s smoothly flowing locks. Both groups embody a simplified idiom modelled after Brussels woodcarving of the late fifteenth century. For this reason, and because the more mannerist characteristics of woodcarving production later to emerge in Antwerp are nowhere discernible, Williamson dated the London group circa 1500-15. Correspondingly, the same would apply for the Amsterdam medallion.

Despite its small size, the present medallion may possibly have functioned as the roof boss of a vault.² Bosses of this type were placed at the apex of wooden vaults where the ribs intersected. In most cases, the boss was encircled by a radiating aureole. Lining the unfinished border of the present medallion are the stubs of numerous nails that probably served to secure such an aureole or other kind of framing. Given their lofty placement, figurative roof bosses were not meant to be seen close up. Like the present piece, they are therefore rarely of a high artistic order. To enhance their visibility, roof bosses were almost always polychromed. Unfortunately, the painting on the present medallion has been lost, with only the flesh tones and several remnants of the gilding intact.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024