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Course: Europe 1300 - 1800 > Unit 6
Lesson 3: Cranach and Altdorfer- Lucas Cranach the Elder, Saint Maurice — a Black saint in the Renaissance
- Cranach, Law and Gospel (Law and Grace)
- Cranach, Adam and Eve
- Cranach's Adam and Eve
- Cranach the Elder, Cupid complaining to Venus
- Cranach the Elder, Judith with the Head of Holofernes
- Altdorfer, the Battle of Issus
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Cranach, Adam and Eve
Lucus Cranach the Elder, Adam and Eve, 1526, oil on panel (Courtauld Gallery, London).
Speakers: Rachel Ropeik and Steven Zucker
. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.Want to join the conversation?
- Why is Eve and Adam always caucasian?(10 votes)
- These paintings were painted by Europeans for a European audience. It would not have resonated with the viewers if the figures did not look like them. You must remember that while Christianity may have originated in the Middle East, most Europeans at the time had never been to the Middle East or met someone from there, and as a result probably assumed that they looked just like them.(41 votes)
- Does it look like Eve has two left hands? Could this be some hint to an esoteric notion of her being sinister?(17 votes)
- Good observation. I don't know when the notion of left-handedness being associated with the devil came to be but I believe you could be right in your view of it being representative of her being sinister. I'm not that perceptive I was looking at the fruit. It looks like a peach rather than an apple. I wonder what fruit grows in that area natively and what fruit would have been Eve's (serpent's?) fruit of choice in reality. Or, I should ask, what fruit was being referred to when the story was written?(7 votes)
- The speakers are wrong about what they say at the end of video about knowledge. The tree in the Bible is not the Tree of Knowledge (2+2=4, mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, whales are mammals, etc.), it's the Tree of the Knowledge of GOOD AND EVIL. They imply completely different things! God did not forbid Adam and Eve to have scholarly knowledge, and the story does not imply that knowledge is "bad", so the comparison they make with the scholarly interests of the renaissance doesn't make any sense. I understand the speakers aren't theologians, but c'mon, how many religious paintings have they studied?(5 votes)
- A painting of a biblical story can stray dramatically from its textual sources, and respond more closely to the particular context in which it was made than to the Bible. I would urge caution in assuming an artist is seeking to recreate a chapter or verse with fidelity. Art is an expression of its time and place, it is not an illustration and it may have motives quite at odds with the story it seems to tell.(2 votes)
- Were there any paintings around that time period that had portrayed them as Middle Eastern? (A continuation of A.king8A's question)(3 votes)
- Probably not. While the Islamic world was also part of the Abrahamic tradition, they also had restrictions on the depiction of the human body.
Still, there were places in the Middle East where those strictures were ignored - anyone else wanna help out with this? If you'd include a link to the painting or depiction, I'd love to see it!(4 votes)
- Is that a unicorn in the background or is it just a white horse?(3 votes)
- Ha! I thought it was a unicorn too at first, but no it's a horse. :)(1 vote)
- Wouldn't they have been a little dark? (dark as in not pure white)(1 vote)
- Yes, but it was painted by a European, who thought white skin was ideal. If it was a Chinese painting, then they would look like Chinese people.(4 votes)
- Can it be that the wavy hair of Eve should remind of a snake? That was my association anyway)(1 vote)
- Is there a reason (at around0:21) that there are three deer, 1 lion figure thing and a boar?(1 vote)
Video transcript
(music) ("In The Sky With
Diamonds" by Scalding Lucy) Steven: We're in the Courtauld Galleries and we're looking at
Lucus Cranach the Elder, Adam and Eve from 1526 and it's a pretty big Cranach. Rachel: It is. I think we're used to seeing perhaps Cranachs that are smaller and on a more intimate scale, but I guess that sort of
matches the grandeur and importance of the Biblical
Adam and Eve story. Steven: So German paintings of this time, I think especially Cranach's, are so peculiar visually. The representation of the body, there a kind of stylization of nature and of the human body that I think strike many people as wonderfully awkward, but also elegant in a curious way. Rachel: Both Adam and Eve
look like they're in courtly poses or very carefully posed and elegantly standing there, but it also just happens to
be in the perfect place for this little grapevine
to grow up naturally and Steven: (laughs) Steven: Okay, so a little poetic [?], Rachel: (laughs) Steven: Now that idea of the courtly is important because Cranach was actually very much a part of the Saxon court. Rachel: And he was painting for the court and the upper classes at the time, but also, interestingly I think, kind of encouraging people to read his images not simply for their religious importance, but also looking at the details of things that they might recognize. These animals, if you were out hunting and you would see deer or sheep or pheasant, all these little animals ... Steven: They're almost didactic. They're almost illustrations
of these animals and maybe becomes a kind of menagerie, a kind of excuse to enjoy this complexity of animal forms and type. Rachel: Well, that's
certainly also reflecting that all these animals would have been in the Garden of Eden. I also think it's interesting, as a little historical side note, Cranach not having seen
a lion in his own life. He was known to use pattern books. He would look up pictures that were made for artists of, "Here's
what a lion looks like if you ever need to put
a lion in your painting." The little lion over on the right side of the painting looks kind of like a dog, but that's (laughs) a
Saxon artist in Bavaria at the time not having
access to real lions. Steven: Of course, many people would have relied on a painting
like this to understand what a lion looked like [entermed] and might have been led astray a little bit. Rachel: Yeah. Steven: Let's talk about
just the central scene for just a moment because
it's pretty wonderful. You have Eve who's at
the point of literally handing Adam the forbidden fruit which we generally think of as an apple, and he looks a little reluctant. Rachel: He does, like he's
scratching his head, "Should I take this? Should I not?" which is a little bit out of the ordinary for how we see Adam depicted, I think. Steven: He looks a little
bit the innocent here. In turn, Eve looks somewhat sinister. Rachel: She has kind of a sly,
sideways glance going on which does give her a
womanly wile appearance. Steven: I think that's
actually amplified by the hair which is pretty extraordinary. She's got these curls that radiate out almost like electricity,
in a variety of different angles and makes her
seem a little bit wild. Rachel: And also kind of connects her to the foliage right behind
her, so it's as though she's connected to the tree and the fruit of knowledge and all of this. Steven: The serpent, the symbol of evil, is paying attention to her. That kind of misogyny or
that kind of attention or implication that Eve is
the responsible party, is a fairly old tradition. Rachel: And I think that's also emphasized by the fact that her left hand is still holding the branch of the tree while she offers Adam
the fruit with her right. Steven: So the story
itself is pretty wonderful. They eat the fruit of
the Tree of Knowledge and know their nakedness. When God reveals Himself
to them, they hide. Like a parent, God just
simply asks the question, "Why are you hiding?" Of course the fact that they had eaten the forbidden fruit comes to light. What I find interesting relates back to something you said earlier which is that this is a more secular rendering that is in some ways less religious. If Cranach, the artist is
actually thinking about the secular, thinking about
knowledge itself as good, that is displaying these animals, displaying the foliage
in a very particular way, giving as much visual
information as he can, very much a characteristic
of the Renaissance, then this notion of eating of the Tree of Knowledge is
interesting in the way that that's folded in, that knowledge in an inherent good and he is a product of this original sin. Rachel: Which definitely would have been, in a Renaissance context, something worth emphasizing because they
were very interested in the pursuit of knowledge
and including that in their paintings and
giving a great amount of emphasis to all of the
learning that they have done. Steven: But in this
context, there's something slightly naughty then,
about that knowledge that it is somehow linked to sin. Rachel: Yes. Steven: And so it's an
interesting kind of balance. Rachel: It becomes a good subject I think, for that little play of
the good and the evil connected with knowledge. Steven: What a great painting. (music) ("In The Sky With
Diamonds" by Scalding Lucy)