Eve

An inventory of Cardinal Scipione Borghese's pictures, drawn up before 1633, listed two long panels, one with Adam and one with Eve, and gave both to Giovanni Bellini, the great master of Venice. On the tree trunk at the lower right, a small painted slip of paper once carried the words "Zambellin fecit", a local way of writing his name. You can still see the slip, though the writing has faded beyond reading. By 1693 the family inventory had moved the pair to the Dutch painter Lucas van Leyden. Only in 1925, when the gallery's director Giulio Cantalamessa rehung the rooms, did they go to Marco Basaiti, a Venetian pupil of Bellini, and most scholars have kept that attribution since. Eve stands almost life-size, holding up the fruit she has just picked, while the serpent winds down the trunk beside her.