TO UNDERSTAND THE SCENE

Naked Eve can be mistaken for Mary Magdalene

who hides her nakedness in her long hair, for she is a repentant sinner; she is often accompanied with a man’s skull, a sign of the vanity of life on earth.

The Garden of Eden; Jacob de BACKER, oil on oak panel; Groeninge Museum, Brugge, Belgium

Web Gallery of Art

The Book of Genesis, chapters 1 and 2  

God creates man and woman. The creation is told twice.

In the first narrative, man and woman are created together: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27)

In the second narrative, God creates the man at first, then the woman.

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Genesis 2:7)

And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, he made into a woman, and brought her to the man. And Adam said : "This is now one of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man !"

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall be joined to his wife: and they shall be one flesh. (Genesis 2:22-24)

THE CREATION OF ADAM AND EVE

The creation of Adam from clay or dust is less frequent than that of Eve. Until the 14^th century, God , wearing the face of Christ, models man like a potter or a sculptor.

 At Chartres the hand of God models and strokes Adam’s face. God shows motherly tenderness

The creation of Adam from clay or dust is less frequent. God moulds man like a potter or a sculptor. Then He gives his spirit to Adam by a sort of ray or by a fluid transmitted through his fingertips.

On the right, God assumes the features of an old man. A triangle indicates He is to be seen as Trinity.

Michelangelo represents the creation of Eve in a fairly classic manner but gives a new dimension to that of Adam.

Eve, created from Adam’s right rib, traditionally comes out in a position of prayer; in Ghiberti, she soars up.

Adam and Eve are part of a luxuriant nature.

“[She] is …flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23), Adam says when he sees Eve. The first human couple speak with God or alone and face each other.

After the discovery of the evolution of species and of the origin of man, the narrative of Genesis and its representations full of imagery have become  exlusively symbolic but they are at the basis of certain attitudes or beliefs outside any religious context.

The idea is that man is both material (clay, dust) AND spiritual (God’s breath, the spirit), body AND soul.

The idea is that man is not a second-rate element of Nature but rather its highest achievement. This assertion is at the basis of the whole humanist thought.

The creation of man from the earth also exists in certain traditions of Hellenistic and Roman antiquity. Prometheus is said to have moulded man like a potter with some earth and water and Athena is said to have given him life.