Cain Slaying Abel
Artist: Pier Francesco Mola (Italian, 1612–1666)
Original Dimensions: 54 3/4" x 35 7/16"
Location: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
About Artwork: (ca. 1650–52) "This vigorous composition depicts the first murder in human history according to the Bible: a fratricide motivated by jealousy between the sons of Adam and Eve. Seventeenth-century collectors and artists were fascinated by such moral dramas culminating in violent action. Mola’s landscape reinforces the subject’s inherent intensity through smoke and light from the nearby fire that rises along the tree trunk and foliage before merging into the branches and sky. It embodies Mola’s moody, even romantic, interpretation of Roman classicism." - (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

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