(Antwerp 1560 – circa 1590/91)
The Earthly Paradise,
oil on panel, 76 x 107 cm, framed

We are grateful to Luuk Pijl for confirming the attribution and for his help in cataloguing the present painting. A certificate is available.

Biographical data about Jacob de Backer is very scant, which makes him one of the most mysterious painters of the 16th century. It is assumed that he was born around 1555 and died circa 1585. He was one of the most important Mannerist masters in 16th-century Antwerp and occupies a firm position between the generations of Frans Floris and Rubens. He was active during the 1570s and first part of the 1580s. Despite that he presumably died early at about 30 years, he was very prolific.

Karel van Mander, the indispensable source regarding 16th century painting, relates in his Schilder-boeck, published in Haarlem in 1604, fol. 231/232, that de Backer was abandoned as a young boy by his father, also a painter, who had to flee Antwerp because of an impending court trial. According to Van Mander the young Jacob de Backer worked for a number of years in the studio of the painter and picture dealer of Italian origin known as Antonio van Palermo (1503/13 – before 1589). He later entered the workshop of Hendrick van Steenwijck the Elder (1550–1603). Van Mander claims that Palermo pushed him so hard that the young de Backer died in the arms of his master’s daughter at the age of thirty. As Van Mander indicates this had happened a long time ago it probably had been before van Steenwijck left Antwerp in 1586. If this is correct it places the time of death of de Backer prior to 1586.

Little is known about his training. Strangely, there is no record of him ever becoming a master in the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke. While his work shows a strong influence of the Mannerism of Rome and Florence, in particular the style of Giorgio Vasari, there is no proof that de Backer visited Italy, as did many of his contemporary Flemish artists. His work is furthermore strongly influenced by the multi-figured compositions by Frans Floris. Many of his compositions deal with complex allegorical subjects. This has been interpreted as evidence that the artist enjoyed a humanistic education and his patrons were from Antwerp’s educated class. Unfortunately, none of his pictures mentioned by Karel van Mander in the Schilder-boeck have been securely identified and no painting or drawing attributed to the master is signed.

Only three known pictures can be traced back by means of provenance to the 16th century. These are two versions of a Last Judgment – one painted for the funerary monument of fellow Antwerp painter Pieter Goetkind and the other for the funerary monument of the famous Antwerp printer and publisher Christophe Plantin, who died in 1589. The version currently in the Antwerp Cathedral originates from the Plantin monument. It is now believed that the side wings to this picture were the work of another artist. The version made for the Goetkind monument is possibly the Last Judgement (circa 1583) recently auctioned by Christie’s on 28 January 2015 in New York, lot 107 (US$ 220,000). These two variant interpretations of the subject of the Last Judgement are believed to be the originals after which the many known copies were made. A series of the Seven Deadly Sins was bought in Antwerp by Alessandro Farnese’s secretary Cosimo Masi in 1594 and taken to Italy. These paintings are now in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples.

The creation of Adam and Eve is recounted in Genesis 2:4–25. Here is rendered how God created man and women, but also the Garden of Eden with rivers, trees, plants and livestock. The composition of the present painting is best known by another version in the Groeningemuseum in Bruges (oil on oak panel, 77.5 x 107.5 cm). Both autograph works are obviously of high painterly quality, and both are stylistically close to the above-mentioned picture sold in 2015 at Christie’s, New York. Two further different versions, with similar dimensions, of the present composition were offered at recent sales: one in a Munich sale, Hampel, 4 July 2008, lot 210, and another in Vienna, Im Kinsky, 8 November, 2011, lot 2. Both have circulated in the art trade the last years. Given their inferior painterly quality it is difficult to determine whether these two versions originate from De Backer’s workshop or whether they have been executed by a different artist copying the present or the Bruges version.