by James Tissot
Posted on 06/23/2020 11:13:03 AM PDT by Hebrews 11:6
The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Here is the Bing page "God's banishment of Adam and Eve” showing various painters' conceptions. Several are serious works worthy of interest. Some examples:
Again, here is the Bing page "God's banishment of Adam and Eve”, with many more images.
Here are links to the previous posts in this series.
The Bible encourages us to meditate on it (Ps. 1:1-3, 119:11-16, etc.), and these artists have done so and their works can assist us. But it is not only oil-on-canvas that can so help us; I refer to the astonishing video series The Chosen, which strolls through the four Gospels at the most leisurely pace. The eight episodes of Season 1 are finished, and the second of a planned seven seasons is coming soon. I say "leisurely" because after an entire year Jesus still has only seven of the apostles (although He's preparing to call up Thomas from the minor leagues--but Thomas is skeptical, of course). Anticipating a canvas of fifty-plus hours instead of a movie's paltry two hours, The Chosen turns the characters into three-dimensional humans and brings the Gospels alive--you have never seen anything even remotely like it. Here is the Official Trailer.
Finally. apropos of Adam and Eve's banishment, here is a link to John Milton's epic PARADISE LOST.
Thank you very much. Only 3 of those pieces portray it scripturally. The ones with Adam and Eve clad in animal skins; usually assumed to be sheepskins. But all of them show the enormous tragedy of the couple receiving the recompense of their disobedience, and being driven out of their once-idyllic home.
Agreed. I was surprised by how few serious paintings I found—these were the best. Tissot even posits a navel for Eve.
William Blake
Thanks.
The Dore painting is the one I recognize......
Great illustrations!
You missed Massacio's "Expulsion From The Garden," which is one of the most famous Renaissance depictions. It had, for some time, been fig-leafed, but has recently been restored to it's original. Adam and Eve were both depicted with belly buttons.
Massacio was around 26-27 years old when he died, and painted that during the last year of his life.
Tissot’s fine banishment effort is front-and-center today.
My view is the angels were there to guard tree of life, not to keep them out of garden. God probably didn’t keep the garden as such any more. They ate of the only fruit forbidden, the tree of knowledge., and brought death into the world. Therefore the tree of life was guarded, for we learn in Genesis 3:16, the way of eternal life was thru Jesus Christ, no longer a tree
to eat to stay alive.
"It offered him an almost endless series of intensely dramatic events. His visions of the looming tower of Babel, the plague of darkness in Egypt, the death of Samson, Isaiah's vision of the destruction of Babylon; these vast, forbidding scenes, heavy with doom, remind one of the visions of John Martin. They also reveal many elements by now familiar in Doré's work: the mountain scenes, the lurid skies, the complicated battles, the almost unremitting brutalism. Doré's illustrations of the Old Testament remind us, above all, of the God of Wrath: of massacres and murders, decapitations and avenging angels. There is, too, a period element: the angels are Victorian angels, full of sentiment; the women are, again, keepsake women, the children are Victorian children: sentimental or wise beyond their years."
So, I'm sure he'll be a regular contributor to this series.
God probably didn’t keep the garden as such any more.
Indeed, He must have created Adam and Eve during the last Ice Age, when sea levels were much lower. The site detailed in Genesis as the convergence of the four rivers is now 200' underwater in the Persian Gulf.
By that measure, in addition to being the "bread of life," we also can call Jesus the "tree of life."
I noticed! Glad I could be helpful. ;_)
In future installments I’ll have links to the Biblical compendia of Tissot, Doré and Rembrandt, who (as I’ve just learned thanks to you and others) painted Bible scenes prolifically.
That’s terrific! Those three were the best.
I like the stained glass interpretations as well, when they are depicting Bible Scenes.
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