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The Fall of Man (Adam and Eve)
Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528)
1504
Medium/Technique
Engraving
Dimensions
Sheet: 25 × 19.4 cm (9 13/16 × 7 5/8 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase with a Centennial gift from Landon T. Clay
Accession Number68.187
NOT ON VIEW
CollectionsEurope, Prints and Drawings
ClassificationsPrints
Dürer's "Adam and Eve" presents human bodies according to the ideals of the Italian Renaissance. The image is also dense with late-medieval symbolism. The animals in the foreground represent characteristics of the four "humors": melancholy (the elk), sensuality (the rabbit), cruelty (the cat), and sluggishness (the ox). It was believed that these "humors" had been in perfect equilibrium within the human body until Adam ate the forbidden fruit.
Catalogue Raisonné
Bartsch (intaglio) 001; Meder 1 (IIa); Hollstein (German, vol. VII) 1
Signed
Signed and dated in plate, on tablet, upper left: ALBERT / DVRER / NORICVS / FACIEBAT / [Dürer's monogram] 1504
Marks
Watermark: bull's head [M. 62]
On verso, stamp in brown ink: Tomas Harris [Lugt 4921]; in graphite: B 1 I/ES.1.; MFA stamp [Lugt 282] with accession number in graphite: 68.187
On verso, stamp in brown ink: Tomas Harris [Lugt 4921]; in graphite: B 1 I/ES.1.; MFA stamp [Lugt 282] with accession number in graphite: 68.187
InscriptionsIn plate, on tablet, at upper left: ALBERT / DVRER / NORICVS / FACIEBAT / [Dürer's monogram] 1504
ProvenanceFriedrich Augustus II of Saxony (b. 1797 - d. 1854; Lugt 971), Dresden. Tomás Harris (b. 1908 - d. 1964), London. 1968, P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., London; 1968, sold by Colnaghi to the MFA. (Accession Date: June 12, 1968)