The Fall

There is a curious parity—of height and even of seeming importance—amongst the three protagonists (Adam, Eve, and the serpent, depicted as a woman-cum-salamander) in this painting by a Flemish master of the sixteenth century.

The painting itself is the left-hand wing of a diptych, so this panel serves as a contribution to a larger visual conversation. It does not have to be self-sufficient in its depiction of the tragedy in the way that single works representing the whole narrative have to be. There is not the same pressure of anxiety to capture the full psychological momentousness of what is underway.

See how the composition edges away into a benign pastoral scene, for example. You could even therefore regard it as gently inclining towards the more casually anecdotal. The salamander with a woman’s face and long hair (though not as long as Eve's) is not part-hidden from view or even 'subtil' (crafty) as the King James Bible has her (3:1). She is not at all—not yet—some malign, earth-creeping, squirmily perverse thing. In fact, rearing up and made to look part human, she seems almost guilelessly curious as to the outcome. Her she-ness is of great significance, of course (though not in the text of Genesis). It points to the notion—so widely-assumed in Christian tradition—that woman was the source of all our anguish in leading Adam astray.

In common with the vast majority of other depictions, the fruit plucked from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is an apple—though it is merely described as a fruit (any fruit will do) in the Bible (vv.3, 6). Eve, face forward, reaches back fairly casually, arm fully extended so as to allow us to admire its twisting musculature as it gleams white against the dark green background. Adam, though covering his genitals, looks little more engaged. He is ready to accept what is being offered, qualmlessly. Something is happening here, but perhaps it is not too much beyond the usual run of things out here in the hilly, bosky, all-too-familiar out of doors...

This collaborative work from relatively early in the seventeenth century shows us a moment of almost joyous loveliness and optimism before the tragedy strikes. This is paradise, lush and wooded, beneath a cheerful sky, frozen in the instant before it turns to paradise no longer.

What a creation this is!

The composition opens up a huge vista of great natural abundance, and the serpent seems to be assisting a liberal apple harvest. Yet this is a genuinely malevolent serpent—coiled round and round the bough of the tree—whose gift of apples to Eve happens almost covertly, from the fly space above this natural stage. A horse looks on, raising a hoof and flaring its nostrils in what may be warning, while a white rabbit—symbol of an innocence and purity to be forever lost?—plays at Adam’s feet.

Eve shows no alarm. Adam looks in no way apprehensive or troubled. It is the teeming, colour-splashed landscape with all its natural life—peacock, ostrich, tiger, and much else—which so preoccupies and beguiles, painted by an artist celebrated for his natural history painting.

Adam and Eve are unashamedly naked (no need for a fig leaf, not yet), and they are surrounded by many of the animals, fish, and fowls of the air that might have been found in paradise, living in a state of blessed harmony, one with another. In the left foreground, for example, is the Bird of Paradise herself, maitre d’ of the scene, a creature unseen in Europe until the sixteenth century (de Rynck 2009: 31).

One detail has an especially poignant theological resonance. Above Adam's head hangs a bunch of grapes, an allusion (it would seem) to the blood that will be shed in payment for this transgression, and of the Eucharist, when it will be drunk to remedy sin’s enduring consequences. 

References

de Rynck, Patrick. 2009. Understanding Paintings: Bible Stories and Classical Myths in Art (London: National Gallery)

Titian brings touches of drama and sensuality to this scene of the serpent’s gift of the fruit. The serpent itself has been anthropomorphized to such an extent that he looks like the sort of charming, puff-cheeked putto who might adorn the upper corner of an altarpiece. He is also actively involved in his own treachery in so far as he reaches down from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and hands Eve what is here shown as an apple. The scene is dark and ominous—see how clouds seem to be gathering as if expressive of divine displeasure. The tree itself is massive, and stands centrally, with the two figures of Adam and Eve organized with a pleasing degree of visual symmetry to left and to right of it.

Titian emphasizes the fleshly appeal of Adam and Eve. The seated Adam is handsome and ruggedly built, muscular, with a tousling of black hair. Eve stands and faces us. Her naked body is splashed with light from goodness knows where in order to enable the viewer to admire and revel in it all the more. Their genital coverings are substantial and lush, and remind us more generally of fecundity.

Adam himself plays a dramatic role. In a departure from the text—which has him happily accede to the fruit—he pushes back against Eve, as if trying to prevent her from doing the baleful deed; as if mindful of its universal consequences for humankind for evermore.

And just to the left of Eve’s right heel, there is a fox peeking out—a fox, an animal both unclean and—as in the fables of Aesop—wily.