The Earth Is the Lord'sಮಾದರಿ

The Creation of the World and the Expulsion from Paradise, 1445
GIOVANNI DI PAOLO

Tempera and gold on wood, 46.4 x 52.1 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Robert Lehman Collection, 1975, 1975.1.31, metmuseum.org

Opening Prayer:

O LORD, as we spend time with art and Scripture today, stir within us those longings that tie us to our awaited togetherness with You.

Rustle within us the ache for truth, goodness, and beauty as we gaze upon the work of this artist’s hands - the product of his own pull toward these eternal qualities of which we get glimpses in this life.

Open our minds to the evidence of our souls’ longings for You, that we may more deeply rejoice in the ultimate satisfaction You will be to these questions, curiosities, and desires.

Guide our eyes to connections between our hearts and minds and those of your children who penned Scripture millennia ago: the questions we ponder, confidence for which we grasp, and beauty we crave.

The Creation of the World commentary by Ittai Weinryb (Visual Commentary on Scripture)

"Giovanni di Paolo painted this panel as part of the predella (the lowermost horizontal component) of his now fragmented Guelfi Altarpiece for the Basilica Cateriniana di San Domenico in Siena.

The panel breaks away from pictorial conventions of narrative and space. The composition itself comprises two scenes, one dealing with the creation of the earth and the other with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.

God the creator descends from the upper left corner of the panel. In the heart of the cosmic disc is a world map showing the concentrated rocky earth of the interconnected four continents devoid of any cities or other human creations. It is surrounded by seven spheres.

The bringing of the world into being is depicted on the left side of the panel as if it were the work of an instant. It is as though time—as creatures know it—is compressed rather than spread out in the moment of creation. Time is present to God all-at-once: whole and entire.

By contrast, the right side of the panel shows ‘transitory’ time being set in motion as the angel expels Adam and Eve. Still within the Garden of Eden, in which the flora are rendered in exact detail, the first man and woman are forced to step towards the edges of the composition, and so out of paradise. Their actual paces mark the beginning of fallen time.

Creation, marked by God placing his finger on the sphere to forge the world in the moment, is matched with the expulsion from the garden, marked by humans’ treading of the earth. These first steps out of Eden begin to beat the rhythm to which all temporal cycles of life and death will march."

Ittai Weinryb. 2021. 'Starting Time' , inThe Visual Commentary Of Scriptureed. by Ben Quash. (London: The Visual Commentary on Scripture Foundation). [Accessed 13.2.2025]

Initial Reflections:

Which details identified in Giovanni di Paolo’s The Creation of the World and the Expulsion from Paradise stood out to you? The imagery of time’s “whole” version being the part of the painting we might consider more abstract? The difference in scale between God’s fingertip touching the whole of Creation and the humans’ entire selves walking on one patch of that Creation? Adam and Eve looking back toward the eternal sphere: their physical selves moving into transient territory while trying not to break eye contact with the wholeness of existence they knew before?

What do the artist’s choices to incorporate these visual details in his work tell us about what concepts in life were captivating to him?

“Time is present to God all-at-once: whole and entire” (Weinryb).

The spherical symbolism used to depict the original Creation on the left is contrasted by a more typical depiction of people and earth on the other half of the painting. Implied by the half of the painting that represents wholeness not being the half we might call more “realistic” is the proposition that the “real” we know is, albeit being real, not whole in the way existence was meant to be. Existence as we know it is but a slice of the existence for which we were created and to which we will one day be restored.

Might the feeling we cannot quite grasp of time slipping through our fingers be highlighting a soul-level layer of who we are and by Whom we are made? Might that feeling be the lingering recognition of our souls that something is off? Could it be that time ought not to be transient in this way, fleeing with the good, true and beautiful moments we are trying but just cannot seem to hold?

Questions to contemplate as you read the passage from Genesis on the next page:

What are some things that are described as “good” in Genesis 1? Which of these elements do you see in The Creation of the World and the Expulsion from Paradise?

Take a few minutes to reflect on how the change in time from eternal to transitory affects the human experience of these good things. Ask God to more deeply reveal to your heart the truth within this overlap of art, our response, and His Word.