Adam and Eve (Dürer)

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Adam and Eve (Albrecht Dürer)
Adam and Eve
Albrecht Dürer , 1507
Oil on pine
each 209 × 81 cm
Museo del Prado

Adam and Eve is a two-part painting, but not a diptych , by Albrecht Dürer . The dimensions of the oil painting on pine wood are each 209 x 81 cm. The exhibition venue is the Museo del Prado in Madrid .

Both paintings were painted on strongly convex wooden panels. Every detail of the skin is visible, every vein, every wrinkle. The representation is so precise that even the best reproduction techniques cannot reproduce what you see in the original.

Description and history

Are shown Adam and Eve . Both stand, frontal life-size, in front of a black background on brownish, stony ground. Your genitals are covered by low-hanging branches. The snake winds around a branch to the right of Eva and hands her the forbidden fruit. The date and monogram are on a plaque on the left below the shame of Eve. A second monogram is carved into the ground at Adam's feet. Adam and Eve are not realistic representations, but ideal portraits according to Dürer's theory of proportions. The paintings from 1507 belong to the collection of the Museo del Prado in Madrid. Nothing is known about the client. In 1516 the tablets were in the possession of a Breslau bishop. They later came into the collection of Emperor Rudolf II. During the Thirty Years' War, the pictures found their way to Stockholm as spoils of war. In 1654 they were given to King Philip IV of Spain by Queen Christina of Sweden . They were rediscovered as works by Dürer in the 19th century by Johann David Passavant in Spain. The panels are regarded as the first autonomous nude representations north of the Alps. The life-size representation of Adam and Eve is found in Lucas Cranach the Elder. Ä. and its continuation with Hans Baldung .

Forerunners and copies

Dürer had already depicted such a scene in 1504 in a drawing that was widely used as a copper engraving, there, however, with forest and mountainous landscapes in the background and animals such as mouse, cat, rabbit, elk, ox, parrot and chamois. A copy from Dürer's workshop is in the Landesmuseum Mainz (inv. No. 438 a and b). These panels hung in the Nuremberg council chamber until 1801, after which they were brought to Paris by art commissioners of the French revolutionary army . As early as 1803, Mainz received it as a gift as part of the Chaptal Decree .

literature

  • Christian Schoen: Albrecht Dürer: Adam and Eve. The paintings, their history and reception by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Ä. and Hans Baldung Grien. Berlin, Reimer 2001, ISBN 3-496-01244-7
  • Katharina Siefert: Adam and Eve representations of the German Renaissance , Karlsruhe 1994 (dissertation)

Individual evidence

  1. a b The copies in the Landesmuseum Mainz , accessed on May 7, 2017
  2. ^ Margit Stadlober: The forest in the painting and the graphics of the Danube style . Böhlau-Verlag, 2006 ISBN 978-3-205-77472-3 p. 218

Web links

Commons : Adam and Eve (Dürer)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files