Adam and Eve

Cranach painted this pair in Wittenberg around 1510, a few years after the Elector of Saxony made him court painter there. It was a quiet cathedral town then. Within a decade the same town would become the center of the Reformation, and Cranach, by then a close friend of Martin Luther, would turn out portraits of the reformer by the workshopful. Adam and Eve became one of his house specialties too. He and his shop would paint the couple more than 50 times over the years, the slim pale bodies set against a black ground, the serpent on the branch, the apples and leaves arranged just so. These two panels are the first he is thought to have painted entirely by his own hand.