Adam and Eve
Albrecht Dürer
ALBRECHT DÜRER, 1504. ENGRAVING WITH BURIN ON COPPER.
Albrecht Dürer would settle for nothing less than perfection. In fully prepare for ‘Adam and Eve’ he had to reinvent the field of representation - studying ancient sculpture, masterpieces of the early renaissance, measuring countless living models and writing four separate books on human proportion, all in service of this single engraving. On his travels to Italy to study the masters, Dürer saw the recently discovered Greek Hellenistic sculpture of Apollo, and the Medici Venus and in these marble forms, saw the way the man and women should be represented. They became his Adam and Eve, situated before the fall in the Garden of Eden, with humans and nature in perfect harmony. Every element of the garden is replete with symbolism; the Parrot on the branch represents paradise and the New World, the tree of life stands behind them, at their feet four separate animals represent the four humours of man and in the distance, a mountain goat stands in careful, innocent balance over the edge of destruction. Hanging from a branch of the tree of life is a plague, bearing Dürer’s name and the date of creation, a knowing nod to cement himself in eternity.