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Lot Essay
In 1505 Dürer embarked on his second journey to Venice, and it is likely that he intended Adam and Eve to be a show-piece for the Italian market, to enhance his reputation as a master printmaker and to attract commissions. It was perfectly suited to this role as it united the painstaking realism and attention to detail for which the northern masters were renowned, with classical nudity and the ideal of disegno, so highly regarded in Renaissance Italy.
More preparatory drawings and trial proofs for Adam and Eve have survived than for any other print by Dürer and it seems he took an unusual amount of care and preparation in its creation. When we consider that it is also the only of his engravings inscribed with his full name, his home town and the date, ALBERT DVRER NORICUS FACIEBAT 1504 ('Albert Dürer of Nuremberg made this in 1504'), it is clear that Dürer intended Adam and Eve to be a work of great ambition and eminence.
The subject of Adam and Eve is well known and Dürer's version is possibly the best-known and most-loved of all his prints. We admire it for its technical perfection, the physical beauty of the figures and the bucolic charm of the forest and its animals. Yet it is easy to overlook the symbolic richness of the print. The whole scene, divided along its centre by the Tree of Knowledge, is an image of duality and division, a visual parable of the Fall. Eve stands next to the Tree of Knowledge, which separates her from Adam, while Adam stretches out his arm across the median provided by its trunk, indicating his complicity with Eve in the unfolding drama. The composition zigzags from the lower left, beginning with the forbidden fruit concealed in Eve's palm, through her right hand which both receives the fig from the serpent and proffers it to her husband, along Adam's left arm and torso, culminating in his right hand which grasps a branch of the Tree of Life, visually anchoring the composition. Dürer uses this compositional devise as a metaphor, not only of the impending Fall, but of future Redemption, the re-appearance of the Tree of Life in Saint's John's Revelation:
'Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him' (Revelation 22: 1-3).
The animals which Dürer places around the human couple magnify the engraving's symbolic charge. The diabolical serpent, wrapped around the Tree of Knowledge, entices the human pair with the proffered fruit, and personifies corruption; while the parrot, perched on a higher branch in the Tree of Life, and ignored by Adam and Eve, personifies wisdom. The cat and mouse in the foreground form another pair of opposites as predator and prey, but death has not yet come into the world and they sit peacefully together.
Apart from the Christian iconography, Dürer also alluded to contemporary humanist philosophy, and the other animals depicted are more than just examples of God's creation in the Garden of Eden: the moose, the cow, the rabbit and the cat each respectively represent the melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine and the choleric temperaments. The theory of these 'four humours' as the ruling principles of the human spirit was widely debated amongst the educated at the time. The mountain goat however is a traditional symbol of lust and damnation. Far in the background behind Eve, it stands on the edge of the abyss, about to fall.
More preparatory drawings and trial proofs for Adam and Eve have survived than for any other print by Dürer and it seems he took an unusual amount of care and preparation in its creation. When we consider that it is also the only of his engravings inscribed with his full name, his home town and the date, ALBERT DVRER NORICUS FACIEBAT 1504 ('Albert Dürer of Nuremberg made this in 1504'), it is clear that Dürer intended Adam and Eve to be a work of great ambition and eminence.
The subject of Adam and Eve is well known and Dürer's version is possibly the best-known and most-loved of all his prints. We admire it for its technical perfection, the physical beauty of the figures and the bucolic charm of the forest and its animals. Yet it is easy to overlook the symbolic richness of the print. The whole scene, divided along its centre by the Tree of Knowledge, is an image of duality and division, a visual parable of the Fall. Eve stands next to the Tree of Knowledge, which separates her from Adam, while Adam stretches out his arm across the median provided by its trunk, indicating his complicity with Eve in the unfolding drama. The composition zigzags from the lower left, beginning with the forbidden fruit concealed in Eve's palm, through her right hand which both receives the fig from the serpent and proffers it to her husband, along Adam's left arm and torso, culminating in his right hand which grasps a branch of the Tree of Life, visually anchoring the composition. Dürer uses this compositional devise as a metaphor, not only of the impending Fall, but of future Redemption, the re-appearance of the Tree of Life in Saint's John's Revelation:
'Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him' (Revelation 22: 1-3).
The animals which Dürer places around the human couple magnify the engraving's symbolic charge. The diabolical serpent, wrapped around the Tree of Knowledge, entices the human pair with the proffered fruit, and personifies corruption; while the parrot, perched on a higher branch in the Tree of Life, and ignored by Adam and Eve, personifies wisdom. The cat and mouse in the foreground form another pair of opposites as predator and prey, but death has not yet come into the world and they sit peacefully together.
Apart from the Christian iconography, Dürer also alluded to contemporary humanist philosophy, and the other animals depicted are more than just examples of God's creation in the Garden of Eden: the moose, the cow, the rabbit and the cat each respectively represent the melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine and the choleric temperaments. The theory of these 'four humours' as the ruling principles of the human spirit was widely debated amongst the educated at the time. The mountain goat however is a traditional symbol of lust and damnation. Far in the background behind Eve, it stands on the edge of the abyss, about to fall.