The Fall of Man

Rubens made this in Madrid in 1628 and 1629, and he was not there to paint. He had come as a diplomat, sent to help negotiate an end to the long war between Spain and the Dutch, and between meetings he had the run of the royal collection. There he found Titian's Adam and Eve, then about 80 years old, and copied it. Copied is too flat a word though. He rebuilt Adam, giving him the heavier muscles of the ancient Belvedere Torso he knew from Rome, and he added a parrot in the branches as a sign of good against the fox of lust below. Two of the greatest painters of Europe are stacked one over the other in the same canvas, the younger man studying the older while affairs of state waited outside.