Attributed to Jan Swart van Groningen (Groningen c. 1490/1500-after 1553 ?Antwerp)

The attribution of this beautifully painted panel has puzzled scholars for generations. Its ascription to Jan Swart van Groningen, first put forward by Friedlnder in 1924, remains the most compelling today. Little is known of Jan Swart; one must rely on van Mander's account that he was a painter of 'landscape, nudes and figures', close in style to Jan van Scorel. Born in Groningen but active in Gouda and Antwerp, Jan Swart went to Italy and lived in Venice - the Venitian sensibility to nature is clearly present in the sky and landscape of this picture. Van Mander heralds Swart as 'a crown for our art of painting' and deems him 'worthy of high renown', despite admitting that he has never seen paintings by the artist. Indeed, the artist's secure oeuvre is limited to woodcuts and stained glass windows, no paintings having been firmly attributed to his hand. The muscular and voluptuous figures of Adam and Eve derive from a widely circulated engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi (fig. 1). The artist's evident interest in the landscape led him to cleverly expand Raimondi's composition.

We are grateful to drs. Luuk Pijl for pointing out (on the basis of photographs) that this panel must have been executed by the same hand as the panel of The Preaching of Saint John the Baptist (Eschende, Rijksmuseum Twenthe), which has also been identified with Swart. He notes that the treatment of the sky, the rocky foreground and foliage are identical in both panels.