About This Artwork

Albrecht Dürer
German, 1471-1528

Adam and Eve, 1504

Engraving on ivory laid paper
250 x 193 mm (image); 253 x 196 mm (sheet)
The 'cartellino' in the tree on the left is inscribed with Dürer's monogram, the date 1504, and the words "Albertus Durer Noricus Faciebat."
Clarence Buckingham Collection, 1944.614

Bartsch 1; Dodgson 39 IV/V; Meder 1 finished plate, 2a/3d; Strauss 42

Albrecht Dürer's engraving Adam and Eve exhibits the extraordinary detail and tonal range of which he was capable. The print's meticulously described landscape and its symbolism are derived from late medieval art, while Dürer's fascination with the canons of classical proportion and anatomy (Adam is posed like the Apollo Belvedere, while Eve recalls classical statues of Venus) comes from his study of Italian Renaissance art.

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

The Art Institute of Chicago, May 1, 1987-February 9, 1989 (Allerton gallery 209A).

The Art Insitute of Chicago, "Altered and Adorned: Using Renaissance Prints in Daily Life," April 29-July 10, 2011, p. 82 fig. 70 (ill)

Publication History

Joseph Meder, Dürer-Katalog (Vienna, 1932), pp. 69-70, no. 1.

Walter L. Strauss, The Intaglio Prints of Albrecht Dürer: Engravings, Etchings, and Drypoints (New York, 1976), pp. 128-132, no. 42.

Walter L. Strauss (ed.), The Illustrated Bartsch, Vol. 10 Sixteenth Century German Artists: Albrecht Dürer (New York, 1981), pp. 10-11, no. 1.

Bruce Thomas Boehrer, Parrot Culture (Philadelphia, 2004), p. 73, fig. 17.

Ownership History

Pierre Mariette (1634-1716), Paris [his inscription, verso, Lugt 1789]. Sir Francis Seymour Haden (1818-1910), London [his stamp, verso, Lugt 1227]. John Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913), New York [Lugt 1509]. Sold by Emil Hirsch to the Art Institute, 1944.