1545
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
The Temptation of Eve is a 1545 by Jean Mignon, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see Eve reaching for an apple while a snake coils around the tree beside her. This painting copies Eve straight from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling—same pose, same face. The artist worked for the French king, so he had access to Italian sketches. He kept the twist of the snake and Adam’s worried look but added his own wild landscape behind them. If you like how old stories get remixed, look up *sfumato*—the soft, smoky way Leonardo da Vinci blurred edges.
In the 1540s Italian artist Luca Penni worked at the French king François I’s court at Fontainebleau. He created this image of the temptation of Eve (etched by Jean Mignon) by directly quoting Michelangelo’s figure of Eve from the Fall of Man scene on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The twisting serpent around the tree and the figure of Adam to the left—though altered from Michelangelo’s original—are still reminiscent of the earlier composition. Penni added his own unique elements, such as a landscape scene with animals and a decorative border featuring grotesques, cornucopias, and scrollwork.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Jean Mignon was a French artist in painting and printmaking in the 16th century, active from 1537 to the mid-1550s.
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