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Adam and Eve
Hans Baldung (German, 1484/85–1545)
1519
- Medium
- woodcut
- Classification
- Dimensions
- Image: 25.2 x 9.7 cm (9 15/16 x 3 13/16 in.); Sheet: 25.2 x 9.7 cm (9 15/16 x 3 13/16 in.)
- Culture
- Germany
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Prints
- Credit line
- Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Adult profiles and older: its museum's description or title mentions nudity. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
In Hans Baldung’s later rendition of Adam and Eve the reduction of setting—in which the Garden of Eden is reduced to a tree—brings the focus to the bodies of Adam and Eve and their physical interaction and desire. Baldung even eliminated the serpent, instead introducing a sinister element in the near-predatory Adam, cast in deep shadow as if emerging from the darkness. With such spare imagery overall, it is the audience, by looking, that is implicated in the first couple’s original sin and guilt.
