Adam and Eve

Painted in 1517, this is a young painter trying things out. It is small and done in oil on paper rather than on a prepared panel, and it shows Adam and Eve close up at the instant of the fall, Eve lifting the apple toward us while the serpent watches from behind. Holbein keeps the two bodies plain and unidealised, thinly painted in the Swiss manner he was picking up in his first Basel years. The detail people remember is the fruit. He paints the apple worm-eaten, already going soft in Eve's hand, so the thing about to change everything is quietly rotting the moment it is offered.