Rembrandt – Adam And Eve, Etching By Pierre-françois Basan, 18th Century

Rembrandt – Adam and Eve, Etching by Pierre-François Basan, 18th Century

Pierre-François Basan (Paris, 1723–1797), after Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669)

Etching on antique laid paper
France, second half of the 18th century
Plate: approx. 15.4 × 11.6 cm
Inscribed in the plate: “Rembrandt f. 1638”

An 18th-century etching engraved by Pierre-François Basan after Rembrandt’s celebrated Adam and Eve of 1638.

Basan was one of the leading Parisian printmakers, publishers and dealers of the 18th century. He acquired a substantial group of Rembrandt’s original copper plates and issued new impressions from them. For this particular composition, however, Basan did not print from Rembrandt’s original plate: he recreated the image on a new copper plate after Rembrandt’s etching.

The scene depicts Adam and Eve at the moment of the Temptation. Rembrandt’s strikingly naturalistic conception is retained, together with the fantastic serpent and the elephant emerging from the shadowy landscape, one of the composition’s most distinctive details.

This Basan version is a genuine 18th-century copperplate etching, rather than a later reproductive or photomechanical print. Examples of the same Basan etching are preserved in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Good impression on antique laid paper, with the laid structure clearly visible in transmitted light. Good condition.