Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden

Before the Fall, in the Book of Genesis, every creature lived at peace with the first man and woman, and that gave an animal painter the one subject where he could put the whole of creation side by side. Wenzel Peter gathered more than 200 animals around Adam and Eve on this canvas, which is more than three metres tall. The museum points out that they come from all over the world and are painted with a naturalist's knowledge as well as a painter's skill, and it calls the picture the climax of his career.

Nobody recorded when he painted it. It is usually placed in the first decades of the 19th century, late in his long life in Rome, and an early biographical account says the work went on almost to the end of it. Peter died in December 1829. In 1831 the new pope, Gregory XVI, bought 20 of his works to furnish the Consistory Hall in the papal apartments.