Eve Tempted by the Serpent

Blake executed the work using a glue-based tempera combined with gold on a copper panel. The palette is dominated by deep blues, golden yellows, browns, and greens. Blake's handling features visible brushwork with a somewhat rough, textured finish, and the serpent's body shows patterned color variation along its length. The artist deliberately chose tempera over oil paint to achieve clear, unmuddied colors and firm, determinate lineaments unbroken by shadows, rejecting the practices of later Italian and Flemish schools. This experimental technique, however, resulted in poor adhesion between the glue-based paint and the copper support, causing the surface to flake badly over time. The overall surface now exhibits a cracked, aged quality throughout.

The painting was commissioned by Thomas Butts, a significant patron of Blake's work, and was likely painted in Great Britain between 1799 and 1800. The work is signed with Blake's monogram, WB inv, in the lower left corner. It eventually entered the art market and was purchased by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1953, where it remains today under accession number P.28-1953. The painting is displayed in the Paintings gallery, room 82, on the south wall.

The painting reflects William Blake's deep engagement with biblical scripture and John Milton's Paradise Lost, a literary source he continually reinterpreted throughout his career. The sleeping Adam in the composition has been compared to the sleeping Albion in Blake's later epic poem Jerusalem, situating this Edenic scene within the artist's broader personal mythology. Blake's choice of medium was tied to his theoretical stance on art, which he articulated in his 1809 Descriptive Catalogue. He advocated for clear colors and defined lineaments over the shadow-heavy techniques of the Renaissance and Baroque traditions, a principle he actively applied in this work despite the structural failures of his chosen materials.

The work's legacy is largely defined by its material vulnerability, serving as a prominent example of the conservation challenges inherent in Blake's experimental painting methods. The severe flaking of the tempera from the copper support highlights the risks he took to achieve his desired aesthetic of clear, unblurred forms. As a visual interpretation of the Genesis narrative, the painting remains a notable example of Blake's unique synthesis of biblical and literary themes, filtered through his personal symbolic language regarding the fall and the emergence of materiality.