The Metropolitan Museum of Art Gallery

The Creation of the World and the Expulsion from Paradise 1445

The masterpiece was painted by Giovanni di Paolo (Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia). It represents a vision of Paradise reminiscent of that described by the great Florentine poet Dante in "The Divine Comedy." The universe is shown as a celestial globe, with the earth at the center surrounded by a series of concentric circles representing first the four elements, the known planets (including the sun, in accordance with medieval and Renaissance cosmology), and finally the constellations of the zodiac. Presiding over the scene of Creation is God the Father, bathed in a glowing celestial light as he is borne aloft by seraphim. Beside the "mappamondo" (map of the world) is the garden of Paradise, its four rivers issuing from the ground at the lower right. The garden's effulgent flora symbolize the pure and sinless state of man before the Fall. A diminutive Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden by a lithe angel whose unusual nakedness and human form may symbolize his deep compassion for the corrupted state of humankind after the fall from grace

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The Banks of the Bièvre near Bicêtre, Henri Rousseau

The Banks of the Bi?vre near Bic?tre ca. 1908?09 Henri Rousseau (le Douanier) French
Rousseau identified the subject of this painting in a handwritten note, affixed to its stretcher, dated 1909, the year he consigned it for sale to the dealer Ambroise Vollard. The scene depicts the landscape around Bic?tre, a working-class community on the southern edge of Paris near the Bi?vre river (now buried underground as it courses through the city). In Rousseau's day, the waterway was heavily polluted, but certain spots still offered picturesque views, as suggested by the figures in peasant dress on the tree-lined path at left, and the glimpse of the seventeenth-century aqueduc d'Arcueil in the background

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Concord Grapes Trade Card 1891

Concord Grapes, from the Fruits series (N12) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes Brands
1891
Issued by Allen & Ginter American
Trade cards from the "Fruits" series (N12), issued in 1891 in a set of 50 cards to promote Allen & Ginter brand cigarettes

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