Das Paradies: The Anthropocene Extinction in Global Art History

Abstract Taking the Flemish-born artist Roelant Savery’s Das Paradies (1626) as a starting point, this essay explores the role of European artistic cultures and collecting practices in inciting the ecocide of the post-1492 Anthropocene Extinction. In particular, I explore how Savery’s celebrated painting of Adam and Eve consuming the forbidden fruit amidst a verdant landscape inhabited by animals such as the now-extinct dodo, endemic to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, became the pivotal foundation for scientific and cultural perceptions of the extinction of nonhuman life in colonial worlds as the natural outcome of European modernity’s global flows.