Temptation of Adam

Around 1550 Tintoretto was a young painter making his name in Venice, and this panel was one of a set of scenes from Genesis he made for the Scuola della Santissima Trinita, a lay confraternity that met near the church of that name. The subject is the oldest one there is, the moment before the fall, but he stages it as a hesitation rather than a sin already done. Eve leans in from the left holding out the fruit, her body turned toward Adam, while he pulls back, one hand half raised, not yet reaching. Look into the small clearing behind them and you can already see the ending, the two figures driven out of the garden. Tintoretto had been studying the muscular nudes of Michelangelo and other Tuscan artists, and you can feel that in the weight of the two bodies. The picture now hangs in the Gallerie dell'Accademia beside its companion of Cain and Abel, the two survivors of the cycle he painted for that Venetian brotherhood.