Der Sündenfall

Titian painted this Adam and Eve around 1550, late in a long career, for a circle around the Spanish court that would eventually send it into the royal collection of Philip the Second. By then Titian was the most famous painter in Europe and could take a scene everyone knew and make it physical. Adam sits heavy and muscular below, reaching up as if to stop what is about to happen, while Eve stands and takes the fruit from a serpent that here has the body of a small winged child. The pose comes partly from a Raphael fresco in the Vatican and partly from a famous Durer engraving, sources Titian plainly knew. What he adds is weight and skin and hesitation, the moment caught just before the fruit changes hands.