Minneapolis Institute of Art
Adam and Eve
Rembrandt van RijnLinkedCulture matchlcp-d6807541bb3d
- Date
- 1638
- Medium
- Etching
- Department
- European Art
- Institution
- Minneapolis Institute of Art
- Object ID
- 55308
From LinkedCulture
In Rembrandt's 1638 etching "Adam and Eve," a small elephant wanders peacefully through a glowing Eden while two very ordinary, unglamorous figures stand in the foreground, hesitating at the edge of everything. A grotesque winged devil, borrowed almost directly from an Albrecht Durer print Rembrandt had just bought at auction, clutches the tree with scaled talons just behind them. Critics mocked this refusal to idealize the human body, but that stubbornness is exactly what makes this image endure.
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From the Minneapolis Institute of Art record
Rembrandt's insistent realism displeased seventeenth-century critics, who preferred classical nudes and the soft, fleshy bodies of Peter Paul Rubens. One critic snipped that Rembrandt chose as his models a peat stamper or washergirl from the barn. Brilliantly, he lit his naturalistic Adam and Eve from behind, with reflected light from the distant Eden, where an elephant ambles along, unaware of the scowling pair. The devil is borrowed from an Albrecht Dürer engraving; Rembrandt had acquired a large group of Dürer prints at auction the same year he made this etching. Netherlands, Europe
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Provenance & credit
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- Credit line
- The William M. Ladd Collection Gift of Herschel V. Jones, 1916
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