Adam and Eve

These two panels, an Adam and an Eve of about 1.7 metres each, were made in 1528 as separate paintings that were always meant to be read as one. The clue is the tree of knowledge, painted in two halves, a half on each panel, so the branches only join when the pictures hang together. The pair reached Florence and the collection of the Medici grand dukes, where a German hand was not what anyone expected. The connoisseur Filippo Baldinucci recorded them as the work of Albrecht Durer, and it took an inventory of 1784 to return the name to Cranach. For most of their life in the Uffizi the two stood apart. In 2025 the gallery set them back inside a single frame, the way the tree was drawn to be seen.