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Overview
Born in the city of Leiden, Lucas van Leyden was the first Dutch engraver to achieve wide acclaim in his lifetime. He made about 200 prints, mostly engravings, but also woodcuts and a few etchings. He met Albrecht Dürer in 1521 during the German artist's year-long visit to the Netherlands, and Dürer drew van Leyden's portraits and bought a set of his prints. It is likely that van Leyden simultanously acquired some of Dürer's prints, as his influence is evident in van Leyden's work in the early 1520s.
The Fall of Man is one of the most famous episodes in the Biblical book of Genesis, and was repeatedly depicted by van Leyden. This engraving is the third in a series of six, The History of Adam and Eve. Eve is customarily shown plucking the apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which God has forbidden her and Adam from eating. She is egged on by the Satan in the form of a serpent. Here she has just done so, and is passing the apple on to Adam who eagerly accepts it. He stands in elegant contrapposto, reflecting the Renaissance influences operating on van Leyden, while Eve is an alluring, seductive figure, befitting both her Biblical role and artistic conventions.
The expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden (also called 'Paradise') will shortly follow, but at this stage all is tenderness and sweetness between the two, with little or no sense of the couple's depravity. The body language of the serpent indicates his enthusiasm in witnessing their imminent fall from grace. What is relatively unusual is how he has another apple in his mouth, enhancing his comic grotesqueness, but also implying that there will be many more apples to eat - and temptations to fall for - in the future for humankind. A century after van Leyden, his compatriot Rembrandt owned this print, and it impacted on his own depictions of the Garden of Eden.
See:
David Maskill, 'Lucas van Leyden 1494-1533 Netherlands', in William McAloon (ed.), Art at Te Papa (Wellington, 2009), p. 26.
Shirley Perlove, 'The Ferocious Dragon and the Docile Elephant: The Unleashing of Sin in Rembrandt's Garden of Eden', in Jennifer Spinks and Dagmar Eichberger, 'Religion, the Supernatural and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe' (Leiden, 2015), pp. 291-92.
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art January 2017