Adam and Eve: paintings by Titian and Rubens

Public Domain Image: Sündenfall (The Fall of Man, often referred to as ‘Adam and Eve’), oil on canvas painting (1570) by the Italian painter Titian, dimensions 240 cm x 186 cm, located at Museo del Prado located in Madrid, the capital of Spain.

Public Domain Image: Adam und Eva (Adam and Eve, alternatively referred to as The Fall of Man)oil on canvas painting (1628-29) by Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens, dimensions 237 cm x 184 cm (93.31 in x 72.44 in), located at Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain.

Hendrick Goltzius: The Fall of Man

Public Domain Photo: The Fall of Man (1616), alternatively titled Adam and Eve: the Fall (Genesis 3:1-7), oil on canvas painting by the Dutch printmaker, draftsman and painter of the early Baroque period Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617), dimensions 104.5 cm x 138.4 cm (41.14 in x 54.49 in) located at The National Gallery of Art located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., U.S.A.

Dimension: 2493×1882 pixels, size: 3870 KB

Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre: The Temptation of Eve

PD Photo: The Temptation of Eve, 18th century oil on canvas painting by French painter Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre (1714-1789), dimensions 48.8 cm x 57.8 cm (19.21 in x 22.76 in) held in private collection.

Byam Shaw: The Woman the Man the Serpent

PD Photo: ‘The Woman The Man The Serpent’, oil painting by Indian-born British painter, illustrator, designer and teacher Byam Shaw (1872-1919), depicting Adam, Eve and the serpent.

John Byam Liston Shaw (1872-1919), known popularly as Byam Shaw, was an Indian-born British painter, illustrator, designer and teacher.

Byam Shaw was born in Madras (now Chennai, India), where his father John Shaw was the Registrar of the High Court of Madras. His family returned to England in 1878 and settled in Kensington. At the age of 15, Byam Shaw entered the St John's Wood Art Schools. From 1890 Shaw studied at the Royal Academy Schools, where he won the Armitage Prize in 1892 for his work “The Judgement of Solomon”.

Byam Shaw worked with equal ease and mastery in a variety of mediums including oils, watercolors, pastels, pen-and-ink and also specialized in techniques such as dyeing and gilding. Because of his waning popularity as an artist, Byam Shaw took up teaching for a living, and taught at the Women's Department of King's College London from 1904. He founded the Byam Shaw and Vicat Cole School of Art in 1910 with his Rex Vicat Cole. The institution was later renamed as Byam Shaw School of Art.

Shaw was influenced by Pre-Raphaelites, Rossetti, Millais, and Leighton. He was also inspired by Indian themes and Indian/ Hindu mythology, on which he created a number of paintings.

Cornelis van Haarlem: De eerste familie (The first family)

PD Photo: De eerste familie (The first family), 1589 oil on canvas painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter and draughtsman Cornelis van Haarlem (Cornelis Corneliszoon van Haarlem, 1562-1638); dimensions 125 cm x 143 cm (49.21 x 56.30 inches), location at Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper, depicting Adam and Eve taking care of Cain and Abel. The painting was in the private collection of Jean-Marie-François-Xavier Comte de Silguy, France until 1864 since when it came to the collection of Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper.

Works of Charles-Joseph Natoire

The French painter Charles-Joseph Natoire (1700-1777), a pupil of François Lemoyne and known for his Rococo style, was the director of the French Academy in Rome from 1751 to 1775. He had a profound influence in the art circles of France of his era. Charles-Joseph Natoire is best known for the series of the History of Psyche for Germain Boffrand's oval salon de la Princesse in the Hôtel de Soubise, Paris. The tapestry cartoons for the series of the History of Don Quixote woven at the Beauvais tapestry manufacture, most of which are located at the Château de Compiègne, also won him much acclaim.

PD image: Adam et Ève chassés du Paradis terrestre (Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise) created in 1740 by Charles-Joseph Natoire, located at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

PD Image: Venus Demanding Arms from Vulcan for Aeneas (1734), oil on canvas painting by Natoire, size 194 cm x 140 cm (76.38 in x 55.12 in), located at Musée Fabre, Montpellier, France.

PD image: The Toilet of Psyche (Psyché à sa toilette), oil on canvas painting by Natoire created in 1735, size 198 cm x 169 cm (77.95 in x 66.54 in), on location at New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans. This is one of the four paintings commissioned in 1735 by the farmer-general La Live de Bellegarde (1680-1751) to decorate the living room of his castle, La Chevrette, in Saint-Denis, France.

PD Image: Psyché obtenant de Proserpine l'elixir de beauté (Proserpine obtaining the elixir of beauty from Psyche) 1735 painting by Natoire located at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles.

Proserpina (also spelt as Proserpine, Prosperine or Prosperina, and in Greek mythology her equivalent is Persephone) is an ancient Roman goddess whose story is the basis of the myth of springtime. She was the daughter of Ceres and Jupiter. Venus sent her son Amor (Cupid) to hit Pluto with one of his arrows of love. Proserpina was at the Pergusa Lake near Enna (Sicily) with some nymphs, when Pluto came out from the volcano Etna. Pluto abducted her and married her and lived with her in Inferi, the Roman Underworld ruled by him. Proserpina thus became the Queen of the Underworld. Being Jupiter's (and Ceres's) brother, Pluto was also her uncle.

Eve, bronze sculpture by Auguste Rodin

Photo: Eve, 1881 bronze sculpture (cast before 1932) by French sculptor Auguste Rodin (François-Auguste-René Rodin, 1840-1917), at the Nasher Sculpture Center museum (Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection) in Dallas, Texas specializing in modern and contemporary sculpture at a site adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art in the heart of the Dallas Arts District - photo by Andreas Praefcke.

Photo: Eve, 1881 bronze sculpture by Auguste Rodin at the Nasher Sculpture Center museum, view from the back, photo by Andreas Praefcke.

Adam and Eve in Islamic tradition

Image: Painting (1294/99) from Manafi al-Hayawan (The Useful Animals), depicting Adam and Eve, from Maragh in Mongolian Iran by Abu Said Ubaud Allah Ibn Bakhitshu.

According to the Qur’an, Adam first ate the forbidden fruit, followed by Eve (Hawwa), for which God later forgave them and sent them to earth as God’s representatives. Nevertheless, Adam was a prophet, and according to the Islamic traditions prophets are sinless.

The early Islamic commentator Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari records that to create Adam, God sent Gabriel (Jibril) and Michael (Mika'il) to fetch clay from the earth. But the earth resented that they came to deform it and the angels returned empty-handed. God responded by sending the Angel of Death who took clay from all regions, which provides an explanation for different looks of different races of humans.

A Prophetic Hadith recalls that after leaving Eden, Adam descended in India whereas Eve descended in Jeddah. They searched for each other, and finally found each other at the Plain of Arafat (near Mecca) which means recognition.