Cain Slaying Abel by Mola in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2022

Title: Cain Slaying Abel

Artist: Pier Francesco Mola (Italian, Coldrerio 1612–1666 Rome)

Date: ca. 1650–52

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 54 3/4 × 35 7/16 in. (139 × 90 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Gift of Alan M. May, in memory of his wife, Marcia W. May, and in celebration of the Museum's 150th Anniversary, 2020

Accession Number: 2020.112


This vigorously conceived composition depicts the first murder in biblical human history: a fratricide that was motivated by jealousy between the sons of Adam and Eve. Seventeenth-century collectors and artists were fascinated by moral dramas culminating in violent action. Mola’s landscape reinforces the subject’s inherent intensity through smoke and light from the nearby fire rising along the tree trunk and foliage before merging into the branches and sky. This painting embodies Mola’s peculiarly romantic interpretation of seventeenth-century Roman classicism.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/817124