The Creation of Eve (Eve créé pendant le sommeil d'Adam)

Etching with a Biblical scene of the Genesis (2:22), illustrating the creation of Eve, accompanied by an inscription in Latin with the verse describing the scene: "And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man." In the first plane, in the center, God floats inside a ring of clouds, pulling Eve from the left side of Adam's chest, as he sleeps reclined against a tree on the left side of the scene. Under the tree is a couple of dogs, and in the background is a landscape with small trees and animals: a couple of elephants, a couple of rams (?), a frolicking horse, and several deer. This composition is very close, though inverted, to a print created by Bernard Salomon on the same subject, illustrating the historical scenes of the Bible.



The plate is part of a set of 36 prints illustrating the history of the Genesis, all with an inscription in Latin with the Biblical verse of the scene or a short summary of the passage with the story, under the lower margin of the thin, rectangular frame containing the scene. The succession of episodes in this set is somewhat chaotic, as only three plates illustrate the history of Creation, while six are consecrated to the history of Adam and Eve, and with striking breaks in the narration. The existence of more complete sets of drawings by Delaune on the same subject suggest that he might have intended more plates to illustrate the history of the Genesis in a more thorough manner, although the prints are yet to be found. Many of these prints represent, simultaneously, two or more episodes separated in time, following the 16th century tradition, inherited from the Middle Ages. Most of them are also inspired on the engravings by Bernard Salomon, created to illustrate the "Quadrins historiques de la Bible" (Historical Biblical Scenes) by Claude Paradin, first published in Lyon in 1553.