Cain killing Abel

Born in the city of Leiden, Lucas van Leyden was the first Dutch engraver to achieve wide acclaim in his lifetime. He made about 200 prints, mostly engravings, but also woodcuts and a few etchings. He met Albrecht Dürer in Antwerp in 1521 during the German artist's year-long visit to the Netherlands, and Dürer drew van Leyden's portrait and bought a set of his prints. It is likely that van Leyden simultaneously acquired some of Dürer's prints, as his influence is evident in van Leyden's work in the early 1520s.

Van Leyden treated the subject of Abel's death at his brother's hand in three separate prints. The story is recounted in the Book of Genesis and tells of Cain's jealousy of his younger brother, whose sacrifice is preferred by God. Cain kills Abel and is condemned to be an outcast in the lands 'east of Eden'. The subject was widely interpreted as foreshadowing Christ's betrayal by Judas and his death at the hands of his own people.

In this engraving, the bearded and clearly older figure of Cain is about to land the death blow on the youthful Abel's exposed neck with the jawbone of an ass. The two figures almost fill the available space, and there is much less landscape setting than in the other two versions of this subject by van Leyden. The heroic nudity of the figures, the pyramidal composition and the corkscrew pose of Abel betray the influence of contemporary Italian art. The thick-set muscularity of the figures recalls the style of Michelangelo.

Italian art was becoming increasingly known to northern European artists through their own travels and through prints. Van Leyden never visited Italy but his compatriot Jan Gossaert, whom van Leyden knew, had been in Rome in 1508-09, when Michelangelo was beginning work on the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. Prints by and after Italian artist were certainly in circulation in northern Europe in van Leyden's time, just as prints by northern European artists were available in Italy. The engraver Marcantonio Raimondi is known to have used the landscape from one of van Leyden's engravings as the background to a print after Michelangelo.

Source: David Maskill, 'Lucas van Leyden 1494-1533 Netherlands', in Art at Te Papa, edited by William McAloon (Wellington: Te Papa Press, 2009), p. 26.