Eva Prima Pandora

The Latin title means Eve, the first Pandora, and that is the idea the whole picture turns on. A reclining nude stands for two women at once, Eve from the Bible and Pandora from Greek myth, both blamed in their stories for loosing trouble on the world. Jean Cousin gives her an apple branch for Eve and a jar for Pandora, with a serpent coiling nearby. He painted it around 1550, in the years when French artists working near the royal court at Fontainebleau were reshaping Italian ideas into a cool, elegant style of their own. It is often called one of the first great nudes in French painting, and it is the only picture art historians confidently give to Cousin's own hand.