Temptation in Eden: Lucas Cranach's Adam and Eve

by Caroline Campbell (Editor)

This catalogue accompanies the first exhibition in Britain to be devoted to Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), one of the greatest German Renaissance painters. Cranach was court artist to the powerful Electors of Saxony, and was a close associate of the Protestant theologian and erstwhile monk Martin Luther (1483-1546). Throughout his career, Cranach devoted his considerable artistic talents to the furthering of the Lutheran cause. He found in Eve's temptation of Adam a subject which was ideally suited to his outstanding gifts as a portrayer of landscape, animals and the female nude, and to which Protestant theologians like Luther did not object. The Courtauld's Adam and Eve is arguably the most beautiful of Cranach's fifty or more depictions of this subject, executed in 1526 when he was at the height of his powers. It brilliantly combines devotional meaning with pictorial elegance and invention. The scene is set in a forest clearing where Eve stands before the Tree of Knowledge, caught in the act of handing an apple to a bewildered Adam. A rich menagerie of birds and animals completes this seductive vision of Paradise in the moments before Man's Fall. This book explores the making and meaning of this Protestant and courtly masterpiece, and the contexts in which it was made and seen. It incorporates conservation and technical research, a field for which the Courtauld Institute is renowned.

144 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Caroline Campbell was born and educated in Belfast. She read Modern History at University College, Oxford, and subsequently received an MA and a PhD from the Courtauld Institute, on the iconography of 15th century Florentine cassoni. She was Print Room Supervisor in the Department of Western Art, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (1998-2000); Curatorial Assistant (2000-01) and Assistant Curator of Renaissance Paintings (2001-05) at the National Gallery, London. Caroline joined the Courtauld as Schroder Foundation Curator of Paintings in 2005.