Adam and Eve
Medium
Woodcut; line block
Dimensions
Sheet: 14 13/16 × 10 3/16 in. (37.6 × 25.8 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1933
Accession Number
33.54.1
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the early 16th century, German artist Hans Baldung Grien, a talented pupil of Albrecht Dürer, created this striking woodcut *Adam and Eve* in 1511. on a substantial sheet measuring nearly 15 by 10 inches, the work captures the biblical couple in the Garden of Eden, accompanied by the fateful serpent—a motif highlighted in its tags. As a line block woodcut from the Northern Renaissance, it exemplifies the era's mastery of printmaking, allowing affordable dissemination of complex imagery to a wide audience beyond elite patrons. Baldung's distinctive style shines through in the dramatic, elon...
About the Artist
Hans Baldung (called Hans Baldung Grien) · 1484–1545
Hans Baldung Grien (1484/85–1545), born in Schwäbisch Gmünd into an erudite family of jurists and physicians, forsook academia to pursue art. His early training around 1500 took place in the Upper Rhineland, likely Strasbourg, before he apprenticed under Albrecht Dürer in Nuremberg from 1503 to 1507. There, the young artist honed his skills in painting, printmaking, and stained glass, even managin...