Cleveland Museum of Art

Adam and Eve in Paradise

Lucas Cranach

Date

1509

Medium

woodcut

Culture

Germany

Department

Prints

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Lucas Cranach’s Eden shows the first couple just prior to tasting the forbidden fruit. Adam holds one fruit, and Eve plucks a second from the tree of knowledge. The composition is packed with stags, horses, sheep, and a lion, ram, and boar. Some of these are associated with human temperaments (personality types), but the many stags suggest more hunting ground than significant allegory. Cranach’s patron, Frederick, Elector of Saxony (1463–1525), whose coats of arms hang from the tree, was an avid hunter whose hunting grounds were perhaps a kind of paradise for him. The coats of arms hanging from the tree in this image are those of the artist's patron, Frederick, Elector of Saxony (1463– 1525).

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