The expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise

This is one of a series of five engravings after the destroyed or detached frescoes by Pordenone in the cloister of Santo Stefano, Venice, of 1532-33, engraved over a century later by Giacomo Piccini. It depicts the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, with the angel usually encountered in this symbolism holding a sword.

Giacomo Piccini was an engraver active in Venice. Brother of the engraver Guglielmo and father of Isabella, he engraved numerous portraits, many of these published, as here, by Stefano Scolari. Pordenone, Il Pordenone in Italian, is the byname of Giovanni Antonio de’ Sacchis (c. 1484–1539), an Italian Mannerist painter, loosely of the Venetian school. Giorgio Vasari, his main biographer, wrongly identifies him as Giovanni Antonio Licinio. He painted in several cities in northern Italy "with speed, vigor, and deliberate coarseness of expression and execution—intended to shock".

The engraving is in the so-called King George IV album of Old Master prints, acquired by the Dominion Museum in 1910.

See: Wikipedia, 'Il Pordenone', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Pordenone

Curator, Historical International Art         March 2017