Adam and Eve
Medium
engraving
Classification
Department
Prints
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.
Accession Number
1958.111
Tags
male
About this artwork
Dürer based Adam’s pose on the Apollo Belvedere, a Roman sculpture discovered in Italy during the late 1400s. He constructed the idealized bodies of Adam and Eve using geometry and a mathematical system of proportion loosely derived from ancient models. For Dürer, who mostly depicted Christian subjects, the creation of theoretically perfect human bodies was a pathway to comprehending the divine. He thus represented Adam and Eve as he understood them in both theological and artistic terms: mome...