罪

In 1893 a group of Munich artists broke away from the official art establishment and mounted their own show, the first Munich Secession. The picture everyone talked about was this one by Franz von Stuck. A woman stands half out of deep shadow, bare to the waist, and a thick dark snake is coiled around her body with its head resting on her shoulder. Both the woman and the serpent look straight out at you with the same steady, unbothered stare. Stuck called it simply The Sin, and meant Eve, but he stripped away the guilt and shame of the old religious versions and left something colder and more knowing. The city bought it for the Neue Pinakothek almost at once, and it made him. Stuck liked it enough to paint the subject again and again. About a dozen versions by his hand are known, scattered now across museums in Germany, Italy and the United States.