The Family of Adam and Eve in front of a Hut

Author: Klazina Botke

This is a copy after a drawing by the Florentine sculptor Baccio Bandinelli (1488-1560).^[1] The original is in Chicago and belongs to a group of studies for bronze reliefs that were intended for the recto of the octagonal choir in Florence Cathedral.^[2] It emerges from the description by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) in his Lives of the Artists that Bandinelli wanted to add 21 bronze reliefs with scenes from the Old Testament to the choir, but these were never realized.^[3] In 1960 Jacob Bean was the first to identify a group of ten drawings with the same technique and style that had been part of this commission. Roger Ward later added a further four sheets.^[4] The drawings are now in Vienna, Bayonne, Chantilly, Chatsworth, London, Paris, Florence, and in private collections.^[5] Ward assumed that these were from the first phase of the design process and suggested that these were the sheets that Bandinelli showed to Cosimo I de’ Medici (1519-1574) in 1547-48.^[6] Because of their refined composition and careful modello-like rendition in pen and ink, these are now considered among the most impressive drawings by Bandinelli.^[7]

The Rotterdam drawing is a copy of the fifth composition in the series. We see Adam and Eve, who, after they were banished from Paradise with their children, had to look after themselves. Adam is working the soil with a hoe and Eve helps one of the children to drink from a goat’s udder while the other child holds the animal by its neck. The composition is based in part on a fresco attributed to Dello Delli (1404-(after) 1466) in the Chiostro Verde of Santa Maria Novella in Florence.^[8]

There are known copies of a number of drawings from the series. According to Ward there is a second, very similar copy of this composition in a private collection.^[9] Laura GiIes and Suzanne Fold McCullagh argue that some of these copies were made by Bandinelli himself. The original drawings were supposedly made to show to the principal, while the copies served as ricordi (records for the artist himself).^[10] It is difficult to say whether this is also true for the Rotterdam drawing. Bandinelli’s own pen-and-ink drawings have strikingly regular and systematic hatching that he employed to give his figures shape and volume, whereas in our sheet there are only the outlines. It might be the case that Bandinelli considered this to be sufficient for his ricordo. After all, the composition is clear. Our drawing is furthermore very flat, as is a copy of the sacrifice of Isaac in Hamburg.^[11] It could therefore also be a later copy, made in Bandinelli’s workshop, and possibly intended for interested collectors.