Hans Sebald Beham (1500-1550)

after Barthel Beham (1502-1540)

Adam and Eve 

Old Master engraving, 1543

with the initials monogram and date in the plate upper left

Superb impression

References: Bartsch 6, Pauli, Hollstein 7.

For disobeying God’s orders and eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve received the punishment of mortality, hard work, and pain. A skeleton, an obvious symbol of death, forms the trunk of the fatal tree, and the evil serpent winds its way through the skeleton’s hollow torso. Sebald Beham’s sensuous intertwining of the nudes, snake, and skeleton blatantly marks this depiction as a sexual awakening. While Adam is entirely naked, the gesture of Eve’s free hand both covers and accentuates her newfound sexuality