''Eve, the Serpent and Death'' (or ''Eve, the Serpent, and Adam as Death'') is a painting by the German Renaissance artist

Hans Baldung Hans Baldung (1484 or 1485 – September 1545), called Hans Baldung Grien, (being an early nickname, because of his predilection for the colour green), was a painter, printer, engraver, draftsman, and stained glass artist, who was considered t ...

, housed in the

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (french: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the ...

, Ottawa. The date of the painting is debated, with proposals ranging from the early 1510s to between 1525 and 1530. Its four main elements are the biblical

Eve Eve (; ; ar, حَوَّاء, Ḥawwāʾ; el, Εὕα, Heúa; la, Eva, Heva; Syriac: romanized: ) is a figure in the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. According to the origin story, "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the ...

, a male figure personifying

Death Death is the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain an organism. For organisms with a brain, death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whole brain, including brainstem, and brain ...

and generally likened to Adam, a

serpent Serpent or The Serpent may refer to: * Snake, a carnivorous reptile of the suborder Serpentes Mythology and religion * Sea serpent, a monstrous ocean creature * Serpent (symbolism), the snake in religious rites and mythological contexts * Serp ...

, and a tree trunk.

History

The painting was in the collection of British politician William Angerstein before being auctioned in 1875 at Christie's as a work of

Lucas Cranach the Elder Lucas Cranach the Elder (german: Lucas Cranach der Ältere ; – 16 October 1553) was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving. He was court painter to the Electors of Saxony for most of his career, and is kno ...

, though in fact the work offers a great contrast to Cranach's many ''Adam and Eve''s, from which only the pose of Eve is borrowed. Almost a century later, it was determined to be a Baldung work by the Scottish branch of

Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...

, where it was auctioned in 1969. The buyer sold it to the National Gallery of Canada of Ottawa in 1972, where it has since been cleaned and restored.

Description

Baldung treated the Fall in a number of

woodcut Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas tha ...

s and paintings, which he signifies by the apple and the bite of the serpent; his iconography is often as original and arresting as in this work. In this panel, the bodies are grand in scale and fill essentially the entire space, and pale foreground colors are used against a dark background. The main elements are intertwined; the serpent is coiled around the tree trunk and also around Death, who he holds to the tree. Death's right arm extends upward to grasp the apple. The serpent, which has red eyes and a

weasel Weasels are mammals of the genus ''Mustela'' of the family Mustelidae. The genus ''Mustela'' includes the least weasels, polecats, stoats, ferrets and European mink. Members of this genus are small, active predators, with long and slender b ...

-like head, closes its jaws around the wrist of Death's left arm, which is at the same time grasping the left arm of Eve. Eve's left hand holds part of the serpent's tail, while her right hand holds an apple behind her back. Among Baldung's treatments of the Fall, the new element in ''Eve, the Serpent and Death'' is the active role of the snake; Adam's decrepit condition, halfway between nude and skeleton, suggests the work of poison, as if from the serpent, and the snake's grip on Adam recalls the biting of the apple in the Fall. The apple that each of the figures holds is the symbolic origin of the present scene, in which "everything is dependent on and implicated in everything else". In the background is a dense forest while two more tree trunks, slim, angled, and parallel, occupy the middle ground. A marguerite, probably an

oxeye daisy ''Leucanthemum vulgare'', commonly known as the ox-eye daisy, oxeye daisy, dog daisy, marguerite (french: Marguerite commune, "common marguerite") and other common names, is a widespread flowering plant native to Europe and the temperate regions ...

,Hieatt, A. Kent (June 1983). "Hans Baldung Grien's Ottawa Eve and Its Context". ''The Art Bulletin''. College Art Association. 65 (2): 290–304. sits at the roots of the main tree trunk, in front of Death's right heel.

References

Sources

* * Koerner, Joseph Leo (1993). ''The Moment of Self-portraiture in German Renaissance Art.'' University of Chicago Press. . {{Authority control 1510s paintings 1520s paintings Paintings by Hans Baldung Collections of the National Gallery of Canada Paintings depicting Adam and Eve Paintings about death Nude art Snakes in art Christian art about death