Paradise with the Fall of Man

Paradise here is mostly animals. Lions, leopards, a peacock and water birds fill the front of this small copper plate, and the Fall itself, Adam and Eve at the tree of knowledge, is a tiny scene in the middle distance. That balance was the house formula of the Brueghel workshop in Antwerp. Jan Brueghel the Elder worked it out in the early 1600s, and collectors paid well for the whole of creation packed into one small, precious object.

A much larger Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man, painted by him together with Rubens around 1615, also belongs to the Mauritshuis and hangs in its main building across the Hofvijver. This version on copper, dated 1630, is catalogued as possibly by his son, Jan the Younger. It is owned by the Mauritshuis too and hangs in the Gallery Prince Willem V.