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Photograph © The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
33
ArtistGerman, 1515–1586

The Fall of Man

after 1549
Pen, black and brown ink, and black wash on laid paper
Sheet: 8 1/4 × 6 1/2 in. (21 × 16.5 cm)
Mount: 9 1/16 × 6 3/4 in. (23 × 17.1 cm)
The Edith A. and Percy S. Straus Collection
44.547
Bibliography

Greub, Suzanne. Von Meisterhand: Die Cranach Sammlung des Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims. Munich: Hirmer, 2015.

 

Koepplin, Dieter, and Tilmin Falk. Lukas Cranach: Gemalde, Zeichnungen, Druckgraphik. Basel: Birkhäuser, 1976.

 

Scharf, Alfred. “Eine Darstellung des Sündenfalls von Lucas Cranach des Jüngere.” Der Cicerone, 21 (1929): 697–98, ill.

 

Wilson, Carolyn C. “Lucas Cranach the Younger: The 1549 ‘Adam and Eve’ and Related Drawings.” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 62, H. 4 (1999): 534–40.

Provenance[Vitale Bloch, Berlin, 1929]; purchased by Percy S. Straus, June 4, 1929; bequeathed to MFAH, 1944.

This biblical scene from Genesis was frequently portrayed in the Renaissance. Lucas Cranach the Younger was no doubt influenced by Albrecht Dürer’s well-known engraving of Adam and Eve, which placed the figures flanking a centrally placed tree of knowledge entwined by the evil serpent. The drawing is fully finished, indicating that it was not made in preparation for Cranach the Younger’s painting of the same subject in the Straus Collection, but for some other purpose.

—Dena M. Woodall



Comparative Images

Fig. 33.1. Lucas Cranach the Younger, Adam, c. 1549, oil on panel, Graphische Sammlung der Univ ...
Fig. 33.1. Lucas Cranach the Younger, Adam, c. 1549, oil on panel, Graphische Sammlung der Universtität Erlungen-Nürnberg, inv. B 1337. 

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