Adam and Eve (Durer)

In this engraving Durer poses Adam and Eve as ideal nudes, a Northern Apollo and Venus, on either side of the Tree of Knowledge - Eve taking the apple from the serpent as Adam grasps a branch hung with the tablet of Durer's signature. The animals encode the four temperaments held in balance before the Fall: cat and mouse, rabbit, ox, and elk, the cat poised to pounce the instant harmony breaks (Genesis 3). It was Durer's manifesto, his attempt to fix perfect human proportion in the exacting medium of the burin. Michelangelo's Sistine Fall and Hugo van der Goes's are both in this collection for comparison.