Paradise Lost (270 x 270 cm)
Materials: Oil on canvas.
Symbolism: The Fall of Man, after the novel Paradise Lost by John Milton (1608-1674), that tells about the disobedience of men and the loss of paradise, where in the middle of the garden the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil were planted.
The First sin: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
Genesis 2,3
The main cause of the destruction of men was the Devil, who persuaded Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, in spite of the explicit prohibition of God.
The Painting:
Upper middle: The Devil and his followers are excluded from heaven; they fall into the large abyss. Under we see Eve in Paradise at the moment she will soon be seduced by the Serpent to eat from the tree. The Archangel Gabriel tries to prevent this. His attempt of guarding people for their perdition will fail. The wings on Eve are the symbol of that fruitless attempt. But at this moment the predators are still tame and live side by side with men.
The seeds of life in the painting, existing out of six circles, symbolize the creation in six days. The symbol appears nine times in the image. The number nine stands both for perfection as infirmity and reflects earthly duality. Moreover, the nine is the last figure in our numerical system and represents in the numerology the line between earth and heaven. The dimensions of the canvas of the painting are a multiple of nine.
Gematria is the method to give Hebrew characters a number value. Because in the time of Moses separate signs for figures did not exist, therefore the characters were used. The 9th character, the Tet, means darkness, as the ninth plague for the Egyptians was darkness. Also refers to the 9 months darkness in the uterus. When Jesus died it was dark up to the ninth hour. Lukas 23:44: And it was on the sixth hour, and there became darkness over the earth until the ninth hour.
Both the first and the second temple was destroyed on the 9th day of the month. In the Torah, the word darkness occurs nine times. But above all the 9th character Tet means snake.