Expulsion from Eden

Genesis tells it in a few lines. After Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, God drives them out of the garden of Eden and sets cherubim with a flaming sword to guard the way back. Strozzi turns the expulsion into a single rush of movement. The museum describes the fleeing figures set along slanting, parallel lines, so that the eye feels them being driven headlong, and emerging from a dark, undefined ground like strokes of light.

The colour has a history of its own. In Genoa, where Strozzi learned to paint, two altarpieces by Rubens had hung in the Jesuit church since early in the 17th century, and the museum sees in this canvas the exuberant colour that Genoese painting took from Rubens and from the Venetians. It singles out the angel's robes, laid in with broad strokes in an unusual chord of violet and gold.