Albrecht Dürer - The way to Copperplate Engraving

DÜRER'S ADAM
AND EVE

Dürer's Artistic Evolution: From Adam and Eve Drawings to Iconic Copperplate Engravings

arts

ALBRECHT DÜRER

Seit fünf Jahrhunderten gilt Albrecht Dürer als einer der größten Künstler seiner Zeit.

Dürers Weg: Von der Zeichnung von Adam und Eva zum Stich und zum endgültigen Druck

Dürer's Artistic Evolution: From Adam and Eve Drawings to Iconic Copperplate Engravings

Albrecht Dürer's engraving 'Adam and Eve' is one of the artist's most famous and well-known works. The period leading up to its completion was marked by numerous sketches, inspired in part by ancient art. This website looks at the various preparatory sketches before focusing on the engraving itself. The analysis concludes with the development of the Adam and Eve motif in the form of an oversized oil painting.

adam and eve
prologue₁

paintings

eve 1

eve 2

Dürer's study of a nude (pictured left), now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, offers a unique insight into his working methods. The woman, holding a fruit in her right hand, probably represents the figure of Eve in the Garden of Eden; her left hand is missing. The vertical line running through Eve's body suggests that Dürer created this drawing in accordance with his own theories on human proportions. The Ashmolean Museum believes that the drawing shown here is probably the earliest study for Dürer's figure of Eve; the vertical line does not appear in later works. ↗ashmolean.org

The second drawing (on the right) looks much more mature. Both the hair and the left hand have been completed. Dürer enhanced the drawing by adding a dark background and his signature. The figure was further completed, with particular attention paid to the effects of light and shadow. Courtesy of The Trustees of the British Museum. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence. ↗britishmuseum.org

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— Prolog

— Zeichnungen

— Adam 1,2

adam and eve
prologue₂

paintings
adam 1

adam 2

Apollo and Diana; the figure of Apollo is one of Dürer's first proportional studies of the male body. The proportions of this figure are more elongated than those of the slightly earlier drawing of a female figure, and more in keeping with classical ideals. It has been suggested that Dürer derived his figure from drawings or prints of the famous ancient sculpture 'Apollo Belvedere', which was discovered in Rome at the end of the 15th century. He later used the proportions and pose of this 'Apollo' drawing for his Adam in the Fall of 1504.

The second drawing is also one of several surviving pages of studies that Dürer prepared for his engraving of Adam and Eve, which he made in 1504. Here he experimented with different positions for Adam's arms and hands, some of which are holding the apple offered by Eve and are drawn in reverse to the engraving. The actual position of Adam's left hand, which was used in the engraving, is the study in the centre, and for his right arm the study in the upper left corner, here holding a stick as opposed to the branch in the engraving. ↗ britishmuseum.org

— Prolog

— Zeichnungen

— Adam und Eva

adam and eve
prologue₃

paintings
adam

eve

Dürer was one of the greatest artists in the European tradition, and this sheet of 'Adam and Eve' is, according to John Marciari (Head of Drawings and Prints at the Morgan Library & Museum), the most comprehensive study for his famous 1504 engraving of Adam and Eve. The Morgan Library owns some 15,000 drawings, but this one by Dürer is probably the most famous of all.

The Morgan offers many opportunities to examine existing works up close, as one would a drawing in the flesh. At the Thaw Conservation Centre, such close examination has revealed some surprising things about the print. Until now, the drawing shown here was thought to be a single piece that Dürer cut up and reassembled. He redrew the outlines of the figures, moved them closer together and used dark brown ink to further unify the evolving composition. themorgan.org

But there's no denying that both figures would never have fit on a single sheet of paper. Marchari points out that the paper was handmade, with different textures on each side. If you use a zoom lens to enlarge the image, you can see one figure on the front and one on the back. So this is not a drawing that was cut up and reassembled, but two separate figures that Dürer combined to construct the scene. themorgan.org

Albrecht Dürer - Painting from Adam and Eve

— hauptteil

— kupferstich

— adam und eva

adam and eve
main section

engraving
adam

eve

There is no better example of Dürer's 107 engravings than his 1504 masterpiece Adam and Eve. In the finished print, we not only see the two figures, but they are both embedded in a narrative setting. For Marciari, it is interesting to see what Dürer did with the two figures. There are some notable changes from the drawing.

The two images show different stages of the final print; some art historians consider the fourth state of the engraving to be particularly noteworthy for its intricate detail and the development of the figures. The fourth state of the engraving, which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, measures approximately 25.1 x 20 cm. The print on the right shows that the background with the parrot, snake and elk was completed first; the figures of Adam and Eve were apparently added later. metmuseum.org

Also significant are the differences Marciari noted between the drawing and the final print. In the drawing, for example, both are holding fruit. Adam has an apple in his right hand and Eve has an apple behind her. In the print, only Eve holds the fruit and the serpent gives her a second piece. This changes the story completely. It makes Eve look much more guilty. In the drawing, they are at eye level, and Eve's open hand suggests that they are discussing what to do next. In the final print, however, Eve is shown lower down the page. Adam is looking down at her. themorgan.org

— epilog

— ölgemälde

— adam, eva

adam and eve
epilogue

oil painting

adam

eve

Dürer painted the panels 'Adam' and 'Eve' on his return from his second trip to Italy in 1505. Both works represent an attempt to combine the knowledge gained on this trip and to find a balance between Italian and Germanic approaches. Again, the overall aim was to depict the ideal perfection of the human body.

The growing Italian influence is visible in the monumental size of his figures, while his Germanic orientation is evident in the colours, the precise details and a naturalistic taste that is expressionistic in nature. ↗museodelprado.es

The solidity of the two bodies, the slightly Gothic curves of Eve - the prototype of a Germanic Venus - and the fascinated expression on Adam's face, his open mouth as the personification of desire, are the outstanding features of these two magnificent nudes, the first life-size nudes in the whole of Northern painting. Dürer emphasises the differences between the two bodies by using a light brown for the man and a pinkish white for the woman. And he depicts them in isolation, rather than alluding to the fall of man and original sin, which are subtly symbolised in the figures' expressions and the motifs surrounding them. ↗museodelprado.es