1530, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Adam and Eve -- Norton Simon Museum (Pasadena)
From the museum label: In this pair of paintings, Adam and Eve are depicted in the moments before they commit original sin by eating the fruit God forbade them to taste. The Renaissance artist Lucas Cranach updated and humanized this biblical story to address his 16th-century audience. With their pale complexions, both figures resemble Northern Europeans, like Cranach himself, and Adam's beard and hairstyle reflect contemporary fashion. Adam's dilemma—whether to take the apple that Eve offers—is communicated with gentle humor as he quizzically scratches his head. Eve looks out toward the viewer, her tilted torso and raised left arm complementing Adam's posture. The sinuous strands of her hair echo the form of the serpent who slithers nearby to tempt her. Cranach's elegant interpretation weaves the sensual appeal of the figures with the story's moral warning in a coolly sophisticated manner.
As court artist to successive electors, or princes, of Saxony in Eastern Germany, Cranach earned acclaim as a painter and printmaker, and especially as a portraitist. His nude subjects, taken from the Bible and more often from mythology, were produced to appeal to his patrons' secular interests. In 1508 Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony from 1486 to 1525, awarded Cranach a coat of arms with the emblem of a winged snake, which appears toward the bottom of the tree trunk in the Adam panel.
1530, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Adam and Eve -- Norton Simon Museum (Pasadena)
From the museum label: In this pair of paintings, Adam and Eve are depicted in the moments before they commit original sin by eating the fruit God forbade them to taste. The Renaissance artist Lucas Cranach updated and humanized this biblical story to address his 16th-century audience. With their pale complexions, both figures resemble Northern Europeans, like Cranach himself, and Adam's beard and hairstyle reflect contemporary fashion. Adam's dilemma—whether to take the apple that Eve offers—is communicated with gentle humor as he quizzically scratches his head. Eve looks out toward the viewer, her tilted torso and raised left arm complementing Adam's posture. The sinuous strands of her hair echo the form of the serpent who slithers nearby to tempt her. Cranach's elegant interpretation weaves the sensual appeal of the figures with the story's moral warning in a coolly sophisticated manner.
As court artist to successive electors, or princes, of Saxony in Eastern Germany, Cranach earned acclaim as a painter and printmaker, and especially as a portraitist. His nude subjects, taken from the Bible and more often from mythology, were produced to appeal to his patrons' secular interests. In 1508 Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony from 1486 to 1525, awarded Cranach a coat of arms with the emblem of a winged snake, which appears toward the bottom of the tree trunk in the Adam panel.