Adam and Eve cast out of the Garden of Eden

A productive painter, De Vos was also a most prolific print designer, after whom over 1500 engravings were made, most of them on religious themes. For a good number, De Vos’s drawn models survive, without exception executed in pen and wash. The present drawing is related to the second of a set of six prints, dated a year after the drawing was made and depicting sinners from the Old Testament (two are after designs by Nikolaas van Hoy, or Hoey; see Hollstein, op. cit., XXI, nos. 1-6, ill.; and XLIV, nos. 187-188, XLV, ill.). The prints were engraved by Raphael Sadeler I, one of the printmakers De Vos collaborated with most frequently. The composition is very similar to a painting by De Vos for the chapel of William, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg in Celle, on the decoration of which he worked between 1569 and 1576 (A. Zweite, Marten de Vos als Maler. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Antwerpener Malerei in der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts, Berlin, 1980, p. 137, no. 35, fig. 44); as well as to a small print by Nicolaes de Bruyn illustrating scenes from the first chapters of Genesis (Hollstein, op. cit., XLIV, no. 10, XLV, ill.).