1519
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
Adam and Eve is a 1519 by Hans Baldung Grien, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This painting shows Adam and Eve standing under a single bare tree. Eve looks calm while Adam lurks in shadow, his body half-hidden in darkness. Baldung leaves out the usual serpent and garden clutter. He wants you to feel the tension between the two figures, not just see the story. The empty space around them makes their awkward pose stand out. Try looking up Hans Baldung (German, 1484/85–1545) next.
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.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Hans Baldung (1484 or 1485 – September 1545), called Hans Baldung Grien, (being an early nickname, because of his predilection for the colour green), was a painter, printer, engraver, draftsman, and stained glass…
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