Adam and Eve

Cleveland Museum of Art

Adam and Eve

Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-91cf98b472c5

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

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.

LinkedCulture assembled this text from several fields of Cleveland Museum of Art’s catalogue record, so it is not the museum’s own wording as published. See “How LinkedCulture maps this record” below.

Cleveland Museum of Art’s catalogue record

Medium
engraving
Credit Line
Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.
Type of artwork
Print
Department
Prints

Also in Cleveland Museum of Art’s record. The museum’s own label for these fields has not been confirmed yet, so each is named by its field in the museum’s data.

creation_date
1504

Taken from LinkedCulture’s stored copy of Cleveland Museum of Art’s record. A fresh capture of the museum’s own record has not been made for this object yet.

From LinkedCulture

Just before the first bite, Adam and Eve exist in a state of total perfection, and Dürer used that single frozen moment to attempt something radical. In this 1504 engraving, he constructed both figures using a mathematical system of proportion, modeling Adam's pose directly on the ancient Roman Apollo Belvedere. A parrot perches on a branch above Adam's hand, a serpent coils through the tree beside Eve, and animals gather in the shadowed ground below. For Dürer, depicting sinless bodies was a pathway to understanding divine creation itself.

Written by LinkedCulture for its video on this object. Machine-generated (claude-sonnet-4-6), not yet reviewed by a person. It is not part of the museum’s record.

What the image shows

Adam and Eve stand in a forested area, holding hands, with a snake and fruit in the background.

Generated by LinkedCulture from the photograph alone, without the museum’s catalogue text (Qwen/Qwen2.5-VL-7B-Instruct), and not yet reviewed by a person. It describes the picture, not the object’s history, and it is not part of the museum’s record.

View at Cleveland Museum of Art ↗

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata. The fields above are the museum’s, under its own labels. LinkedCulture’s derived fields are listed separately below and marked as ours.

Get printable QR codes

Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.

Open this page QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.oMhULGaoC4gFHKFK.vetZ6DDJfsQ3aVyTWyV4_ZMNeczZqA1yhR6HZFwau-2LZXqkTZGU0w6f1MU6vPPR54_PiBMQMCL17FxVnBiUv-dHyKWRd7nZVRFMynPvqX9VfBB1ur9Glb5LI9DfrCN17I_xbNPxOj-jEn4YauVOcumaDqkpHPg5uGTo5g7dANE83Qq3U69VmLIREwwwjHWhY32QuOHgJ4WHEbOS8B9-Z-WpUifS6PvcUqz5rLxlFyxEAfEZ2dNOW0yUmXx0hJOFLgtzxlxjaNd_26JbapV-ABJl0xQNTb0446qOzWFkrNj_CB9CBASee at Cleveland Museum of Art QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.5488p8t5yz0hCkfa.yUaHo5DLAwh8oM7UkgpOkhvJg7pZ9XyVyYlDgcv6E_7xRPirb1x5_oDJ7I81H3gIKgDmxUEd8TDZA6FdIuo9CCQ8xw51S9wcT0PM01zV5_gMbwKTNhfnc8DbpLHOYslBXzxWRW2k5oNdiQ2HzxTe8xdkZOzr3aJQOfwXdpc-cFd_uYuVGH2FVclcYW-qfirkB9O_5wsK99dQHWYLnB5MUn5EArTGnFKpYZGdxSMwmqqQtaZJCWPlOcRll4qa7RLSc_dzf4CYhIhNelowy2oYIVDpL-ihtcyC_Ec59elNSQ
Open this page
See at Cleveland Museum of Art
How LinkedCulture maps this record

To search objects from different museums together, LinkedCulture reads each museum’s record into a common set of fields. The values below are LinkedCulture’s, under LinkedCulture’s names. They are not Cleveland Museum of Art’s wording; the museum’s own record is shown above under its own labels.

Object ID
135067
Object Type
Print
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Type of artwork” · copied as is
Creator
Albrecht Dürer
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creators (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · derived by LinkedCulture from the museum field · Artist-role creator's description with life dates removed.
Culture
Germany, early 16th Century
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Culture” · copied as is
Medium
engraving
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Medium” · copied as is · Cleveland's 'technique' field holds materials.
Department
Prints
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Department” · copied as is
Tags
  • male
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field tags (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · combined from several museum fields
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field artists_tags (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · combined from several museum fields
Credit Line
Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Credit Line” · copied as is
Date
1504
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
Begin Year
1504
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date_earliest (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
End Year
1504
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date_latest (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is

The museum’s own record has not been captured for this object yet, so the museum fields shown above are limited to values LinkedCulture stored unchanged.

LinkedCulture video

Adam and Eve

Jul 31, 2026 · Short

YouTubeInstagram
Follow LinkedCultureYouTubeInstagramBluesky
Museum record

Related across collections

Semantically similar works from Cleveland Museum of Art and other institutions.