I’ve almost done writing a very long short story in which I allude to a painting of the above subject that I THINK I’ve seen. Or maybe I’m just imagining having seen it. In the passage (below, with the character’s name omitted) I say it’s Caravaggio, but that’s an utterly random guess, and I doubt very much it is. Can anyone supply the missing artist, or do I need to change the whole passage to reflect the fact that no artist has ever tried to capture the kind of innocence I describe here? If that’s the case, some artist had better get cracking, because it’s a lovely subject I’m making up, if indeed I am inventing this as a subject for a painting (and how likely is that?).
“Removing [her] clothing in my unlighted bedroom at sunset, I marveled at her body in the fading light. She looked at my nude body. If I had taken my Art Humanities course yet, I would have recognized --in our awkwardness, our innocence, our amazement with each other’s nudity-—the wide-eyed way Adam and Eve looked in Caravaggio’s study of them just before they were expelled from Paradise.”
Well, technically ANY image of Adam and Eve before he bites the apple is Prelapsarian. . . care to describe the picture you are thinking of in some more detail? Try subject “creation of eve”, maybe?
Well, it would have to be between the creation of Eve and the bite, I’d think. I’m just having a very hard time imagining that no great painting was ever inspired by the perfect innocence in the garden. Maybe I’m not even thinking of a specific painting so much as supposing that SOMEONE must’ve wanted to depict this perfect innocence.
I can’t think of any painting by Caravaggio of Adam and Eve, either before or after the Fall. You may be thinking of Tintoretto’s painting --although that painting really depicts the moment Eve offers Adam the apple, so it’s really right in the middle of the Temptation itself (and, if you look in the background, you can actually see the next part of the story–Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Paradise).
There are some paintings that depict Adam and Eve before the Temptation, but as has been said, they’re usually of the Creation of Eve.
Keep in mind that most religious paintings of Adam and Eve were commissioned by the Catholic Church, and they therefore tended to stress the moment at which mankind fell from innocence–by succumbing to temptation, Adam and Eve (and the entire human race) call into necessity the Incarnation of Christ, through whose death the human race will be redeemed–this is the message that the Church typically wanted to artists to convey in their paintings of Adam and Eve. Not the innocence, but the event which caused that loss of innocence and which required Christ’s intervention to make everything all right again.
In other words, you aren’t going to find many artists, and certainly not those who are working on commissions, who would represent scenes outside of the usual set of events (Creation of Adam; Creation of Eve; Temptation; and the Expulsion from the Garden)–at least, not before the nineteenth century.
You might want to try searching for “Adam and Eve in Paradise” to get images from before the fall. There’s a nice Poussin on this theme, Adam and Eve in Paradise, and Poussin would be an understandable reference for a short story reader. There is also an early painting by Rubens, with the same title. (with strategic foliage, alas!)
You might also look at The Earthly Paradise by Wenzel Peter, although Adam and Eve seem more like “budding young zoologists” than “innocent.”
There’s certainly something very screwed up about a culture that posits the world beginning in a state of innocence, but which then constrains its artists from imagining what that state might look like, isn’t there? Thanks for suggesting Tintoretto–as I said, I’m probably not even thinking of a specific painting, though I’d love to know of any painting that shows Adam and Eve before the fall.
I hope I don’t have to resort to Keane for an example of the kind of wide-eyed wonder I want to describe here. (Sp? Keen? Kean? You know, that 20th century sentimentalist with big-eyed puppydogs and kids.)
Delphica–Thanks for your suggestions–now I have something more authentic then some hazy musings to put in the story, though I’m still looking.
It’s really hard to understand how no painter was ever tempted by the challenge of depicting the kind of innocent delight I’m looking for. You’re right, the Wenzel Peter painting is almost ludicrously emphasizing the scecies variation in Eden, and the Poussin makes A & E. seem almost a detail in a lush landscape, while the Rubens goes in the other direction: in Rubens, besides, A. and E.'s expressions don’t seem quite innocent to me. But maybe I’ll look at a print in the library today and see some more detail.
BTW, folks, this proves to me the expertise of the SDMB. I’ve been trying to research, somewhat casually, this question for a little while, using the resources at my disposal, as a professor in a major university in NYC (with a functioning if small Art History department). I’ve gotten more useful suggestions in less than 24 hours from the SDMB than I did in weeks of pestering my colleagues, librarians, etc.
PRR, I think you’d have more luck finding the kind of image you’re looking for in 19th-century art rather than in Renaissance or Baroque art. I think most artists during pre-modern eras generally looked upon the Garden of Eden through theological eyes, and focused more on the fall from innocence (for the reasons I mentioned in the post above). I doubt if many artists were really gave much thought to the pre-Fall innocence as a subject in its own right before the Romantic movement.
The artist who keeps coming to my mind is William Blake–he admired texts like Milton’s Paradise Lost, which gave quite a bit of attention to Adam and Eve’s history before the Fall (but still, of course, with an eye to that pivotal moment of the Temptation). Blake, however, interpreted Milton in a wonderfully modern and Romanticist way–he believed that Lucifer was really the good guy in the narrative. Blake doesn’t offer much in the way of Adam and Eve images, unfortunately–most of his paintings were based upon his very idiosyncratic mythology, although they often contain allegorical references to the Bible.
I also keep thinking about that anecdote about how a friend once came to visit Blake, and found him and his wife in their garden, completely nude, “role-playing” as Adam and Eve before the Fall (they were reputedly reciting Adam and Eve’s verses from Paradise Lost). It’s a striking mental image, anyway!
One last note: I did come across a Victorian painting of Adam and Eve before the Fall (no snake or any other reference to the Temptation) by George Frederick Watts. Watts did a whole series of Eve paintings, although most of them were tangentially related to the Creation-Fall narrative. I imagine there might be some other paintings from the mid to late nineteenth century that deal with the moments between the Creation of Eve and the Temptation.
Of course, the Victorian painters also developed a naughty interest in Lilith, Adam’s first and sexually-empowered wife–but that’s whole different thread.
Well, it’s only the alliteration with Caravaggio that made me think of it, but Lucas Cranach’s Adam and Eve are quite well known. (She’s just bitten the apple and is offering it to Adam.)
