Adam and Eve

In 1598 the painters' guild of St Luke in Antwerp admitted a new master, Peter Paul Rubens, aged 21. Two years later he left for Italy and stayed eight years, so very little survives from the stretch in between. This unsigned panel is one of those few pictures.

The poses come almost directly from an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi after a design by Raphael. The cool greens and blues and the carefully drawn landscape are still close to his teacher, the Antwerp painter Otto van Veen. Where Rubens pushed further was the exchange between the two figures. He repainted Adam's face and raised arm several times, sharpening the warning gesture of his open hand, while Eve already lifts the apple to her mouth. The garden around them is full of animals the Rubens House reads as signs of the Fall, from the rabbit near Eve's feet to the serpent coiled in the tree above her.