Cain (detail)
by REHBERG, Friedrich, Oil on canvas
The figure of Cain is the main focus of attention, while the landscape in the background - showing his murdered brother Abel and their parents Adam and Eve - is the ideal setting for the human being, considered during Neoclassicism as the centre of the universe. A pictorial vindication of primeval justice is dramatized in the work by the bolt of divine lightning shredding the sky.