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Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve
1504
Albrecht Dürer
(German, 1471-1528)
Engraving
Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. 1958.111
Catalogue raisonné: Meder 1
State: III/III
Location
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Description
Dürer based Adam’s pose on the Apollo Belvedere, a Roman sculpture discovered in Italy during the late 1400s. He constructed the idealized bodies of Adam and Eve using geometry and a mathematical system of proportion loosely derived from ancient models. For Dürer, who mostly depicted Christian subjects, the creation of theoretically perfect human bodies was a pathway to comprehending the divine. He thus represented Adam and Eve as he understood them in both theological and artistic terms: moments before tasting the forbidden fruit, they are still uncorrupted by sin and death, existing in a state of faultless beauty.
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