The Creation

The six days of the Creation. This is a page size miniature that Michiel van der Borch made in a manuscript of Jacob van Maerlant's rhymed Bible. The text was Van Maerlant's translation and adaptation of Petrus Comestor's Historia scholastica.

Michiel put his name and the date below another miniature in the manuscript, making him the first painter known by name in the Netherlands.

Top left: God addresses a group of angels, who represent Light.

Center left: God creates a firmament which he called Heaven. It divided the waters in heaven and below.

Bottom left: on the third day God separated land and water in the waters below. He made plants and trees grow on the land.

Top right: on the fourth day God set the sun, the moon and the stars in the firmament of the heaven.

Center right: the creation of the great whales, the fish, and of the birds.

Bottom right: the sixth day. God created cattle, "creeping thing", wild animals, and, finally, man. God pulls Eve from one of sleeping Adam's ribs.