Albrecht Durer, Adam and Eve

Danielle Vadala Blog Chpt. 21 (4-20-10)
Albrecht Durer, Adam and Eve 1504

Durer not only mastered the woodcut he became an “unparalleled engraver”
(130 Cole and Gault). Durer had the ability to make the copper plate yield diverse effects of line, light, shade, and texture. In the artwork Adam ad Eve Durer joined the quest for the ideal beauty and proportions of the humane figure that had inspired Italian masters of the time to look at surviving works of antiquity (130). The engraving is set in a dark German forest surrounded by local as well as exotic fauna. The two reflect the most perfect of God’s creation, who “through their disobidience to Him, doomed their descendents to physical as well as spiritual imperfection” (130).

Eve is holding a snake and Adam is holding a branch that has a bird on it also with a sign held on it that has the artist name on it. The engraving is black and white and has the two subjects nude with only leaves placed over their private parts. Both Adam and Eve’s hair is engraved perfectly and bold. According to Cole, Durer’s methodical burin has transcribed every wave of Eve’s luxuriant tresses, and every hair of the cat’s thick coat” (131). There are various animals on the ground; such as a mouse, cat, goat and rabbit. According to Cole and Gault, symbolically, the cat and all the other creatures explain the nature an the consequences of the Fall: as the cat traps the mouse, Eve caught Adam, and their sin of disobedience brought into being the four temperaments, or humors- the phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine, and melancholic personalities (131).
Durer’s growing interest in Italian art and his theoretical investigations are reflected in this 1504 engraving of Adam and Eve. It represents his first documented use of ideal human proportions based on Roman copies of ancient Greek sculpture. Behind his idealized human figures he represents plants and animals with typically northern European naturalistic detail (716).