Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve are a pair of paintings by the German Renaissance master Lucas Cranach the Elder, dating from 1528. There are other paintings by the same artist with the same title, depicting the subjects together in a double portrait or separately in a pair of Pictures. , for example, at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Courtauld Gallery in London, the Museum der bildenden Künste in Leipzig and the Art Institute of Chicago.

The two biblical ancestors are represented, in two different panels, against a dark background, standing on barely visible ground. They both hold two small branches that cover their sexual organs. Eve holds the traditional apple, with the serpent coming from above from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam is shown scratching the right crown of his scalp.

The work was part of the collections of the grand dukes of Tuscany since 1688, and has been included in the Uffizi since the beginning of the 18th century. Filippo Baldinucci attributed it to Albrecht Dürer, until the inventory of 1784 assigned it to Cranach.

The theme continues Dürer's studies of anatomy, which had culminated in his large panels of Adam and Eve now in the Prado Museum. These were the first full-size nudes painted by a German artist. During his stay in Vienna, Cranach had frequented some groups of humanists who were close to Dürer, and from there he was inspired to make a first smaller version of the theme of Adam and Eve in 1510, currently housed in the National Museum in Warsaw. .