Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve stand in a dark forest beside the tree of knowledge, the serpent coiled about its trunk offering the apple. Albrecht Dürer engraved this landmark print in 1504, and it became one of the most celebrated images in the history of printmaking — the first engraving to unite the monumental classical ideal of the human figure with the new art of copperplate engraving at its most virtuosic. Its fame rests on the precision of the modelling, from the texture of fur and foliage to the play of light across flesh, and on the confidence of a young artist who signed it with his full monogram, certain it would secure his reputation.