Adam and Eve1504
Adam and Eve stand in the Garden of Eden at the instant before the Fall, as the serpent offers the fruit and Eve reaches to take it. More about this work
About this work
Adam and Eve stand in the Garden of Eden at the instant before the Fall, as the serpent offers the fruit and Eve reaches to take it. Dürer used the pair to set out his study of ideal human proportions, drawn from classical sculpture, and engraved them with extraordinary precision. The animals around them have been read as the four temperaments, which the Fall would throw out of balance: the cat for choleric, the rabbit for sanguine, the elk for melancholic and the ox for phlegmatic. A cat crouches near a mouse at Adam’s feet, and a tablet hanging from a branch carries Dürer’s Latin signature and the date 1504.
Written by Ochre Editions.
How it was made
- Engraving
- Lines cut directly into a metal plate with a steel burin, which makes them swell and taper. It took years to master, and for centuries it was how paintings travelled as pictures.
Albrecht Dürer
German, 1471–1528 · Born and died in Nuremberg.
Dürer trained as a goldsmith with his father and then under the Nuremberg painter Michael Wolgemut, whose studio produced woodcut book illustrations. Two journeys to Italy brought him into contact with Venetian painting and the theory of proportion, which he set out to bring north. He raised woodcut and engraving to new heights of detail and ambition, issuing his own series such as The Apocalypse and The Life of the Virgin, and his engraving Adam and Eve of 1504 shows his study of the ideal human figure.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Met has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 19.73.1
- Credit
- Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Type
- Prints
- Department
- Drawings and Prints
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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