Peter Paul Rubens was born in the German city of Siegen, Nassau-Dillenburg, to Jan Rubens and Maria Pypelincks. Following the increased religious turmoil and persecution of Protestants during the Duke of Alba’s reign of the Spanish Netherlands, Rubens’ Calvinist parents fled Antwerp for Cologne in 1568. Jan Rubens settled at the court of Anna of Saxony, the second wife of William I of Orange, in Siegen in 1570, becoming first the legal advisor and then the lover of Anna. In consequence of his father’s imprisonment for this affair, Rubens’ mother decided to return to Cologne the following year. In 1589, two years after his father’s death, Rubens moved with his mother to Antwerp, where he was then raised as a Catholic. Religion was to figure prominently in much of his work and the artist later became one of the leading voices of the Catholic Counter-Reformation style of painting.
In Antwerp, Rubens received a humanist education, studying Latin and classical literature, before starting his artistic apprenticeship with Tobias Verhaeght at the age of fourteen. Subsequently, he studied under two of the city’s leading painters of the time, the late Mannerist artists Adam van Noort and Otto van Veen. Much of Rubens’ earliest training involved copying the works of great masters, such as woodcuts by Hans Holbein the Younger and Marcantonio Raimondi’s engravings after Raphael. Rubens completed his education in 1598, at which time he entered the Guild of St. Luke as an independent master in his own right.
Held in the Rubenshuis in Antwerp, Adam and Eve, a panel depicting the fall from grace of the biblical first humans, is one of the few surviving paintings from this period. The panel demonstrates the influence of Otto van Veen, Rubens’ last and most influential teacher. The use of colour, with predominant cool hues of green and blue and the finely clear contours are also reminiscent of van Veen’s work. Rubens’ treatment of the figures and the landscape is notably static and precise, though his forthcoming time in Italy would allow the young artist’s style greater freedom, when his use of colour would become more expressive.
The poses of the figures are taken from a print of the subject by Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael, though Rubens gives them new life, with Adam more muscular and closely observed, as the head is turned out of pure profile to allow more expression to be seen in the face. Eve is more idealised in form and beauty, perhaps hinting at the young artist’s limited experience of painting the female nude. She is softer and more sensuous than Vacnius’ figures, her raised hand enclosing the apple as if she is about to bite it, while the close proximity of Adam’s open hand to her arm stresses the tension of the moment.
Although little is known about the early history of the panel, it may be one of the works described as ‘beautiful’, which according to Rubens’ mother’s will of 1606, he deposited in her house before leaving for Italy in 1600.