Adam and Eve

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Adam and Eve

Rembrandt van RijnLinkedCulture matchlcp-d6807541bb3d

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

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

Minneapolis Institute of Art’s catalogue record

Dated
1638
Artist
Rembrandt van Rijn
Department
European Art
Credit
The William M. Ladd Collection Gift of Herschel V. Jones, 1916
Medium
Etching

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

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.

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.

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Open this page QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.0Nz5jkIQocmqOk00.lu_V1lEhYE0QqGGZ9JMetkH67E2ccxUJsf7bHKk8-JJ5qdL5rgt-u-pTDD7dGnkeegs2MbRs9SufvwlO_TJWX0BGQdFdRp4B4M01JzSqpK8g-UKg7tlxdlqVp31pOtJrdVPrlqdsLgCCJu0mM_fMqfIQia_Q_EESUB17nZZwDw10PTMveh5Oi6cnGJ5wFhr5px842yehDczgObfFzB89EFr3cLaFLarLLA0LxUVQ7NNIUtM0MS6HPjj5sEtEoVsFZtZPozn_e8fgggSee at Minneapolis Institute of Art QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.nWvAw7Wz-PVdG6c4.BdSXIpPY-0_E7IJCF6HKJhfPAJpTacdbwb7JZWnbOFhcVIzE5JwIjkWuGpbbucOLu8jZhwBe_nRwZkfkZeWAW6n1m1oELqrbREVuA5qqqSJD8HNlCT7yGLHOf8-FdRi7LpcnPzFIlfFQLVdq-YJmuHnTTzJfOHhzowFEFNFOlxXMEQLZ5z4A8_56k9Rfqmi2y3GAoTU4us0gmKRXTXFp6lpHvVUM0pf_fYtQGqnkIg2ADrHUu7ogaGwsJF_gwxY6o1OAtn6GPgNE6rZd7iC3
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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 Minneapolis Institute of Art’s wording; the museum’s own record is shown above under its own labels.

Object ID
55308
Object Type
Prints
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Classification” · the first available of several museum fields
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Object Name” · the first available of several museum fields
Creator
Rembrandt van Rijn
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Artist” · copied as is
Medium
Etching
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Medium” · copied as is
Department
European Art
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Department” · copied as is
Credit Line
The William M. Ladd Collection Gift of Herschel V. Jones, 1916
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Credit” · copied as is
Date
1638
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Dated” · copied as is
Begin Year
1638
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Dated” · derived by LinkedCulture from the museum field
End Year
1638
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Dated” · derived by LinkedCulture from the museum field

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

Sep 28, 2026 · Short

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