The Rebuke of Adam and Eve

In a wooded garden God descends to confront Adam and Eve after the Fall, and the pair pass the blame down the line - Adam points to Eve, Eve to the serpent at her feet. Domenichino, a leading heir of the Carracci's Bolognese reform, stages the rebuke with clear classical order and a tender, detailed landscape full of animals from the lost paradise. Now in Washington, the picture turns the first sin into an almost human comedy of excuses, the grand theological moment grounded in the very ordinary refusal to take the blame.