Adam and Eve 1538

Lucas Cranach the Elder painted this ‘Adam and Eve’ panel with oil on wood in the early sixteenth century. Cranach was a court painter, so he would have been very familiar with the craft of panel painting, and the painstaking labor involved in creating a smooth gesso ground, carefully building up layers of paint, and then varnishing the surface to give it that lustrous finish. He also made a lot of works – paintings, but also prints – and some of them were turned out by his workshop, which raises questions about how much of this particular work was actually painted by his own hand. The material qualities are striking: notice the smoothness of the figures’ skin, the careful gradations of light and shadow. It is a testament to the sophistication of oil painting techniques at this time. Yet, these visual effects shouldn't distract from the amount of labor involved. It took time, skill, and practice to achieve such results. Considering the making of this panel reminds us that art doesn’t just appear, it is the result of human effort.