Event Item: 00036

Temptation in Eden: Lucas Cranach's Adam & Eve

Exhibition: 21st Jun 2007 to 23rd Sep 2007

Source: http://www.courtauld.ac.uk

This stunning exhibition is the first in Britain devoted to the great German Renaissance painter Lucas Cranach the Elder (c.1472-1553), at the Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery.

Temptation in Eden focuses on one of Cranach's most memorable and enchanting works: the Courtauld's Adam and Eve, painted in 1526 when the artist was at the height of his powers. This beguiling painting demonstrates Cranach's outstanding gifts as a portrayer of landscape, animals and the female nude.

Adam and Eve is shown alongside a number other works which express the same themes of temptation and beauty, and were made on a domestic scale between 1526 and 1530. They include the Royal Collection's Apollo and Diana, the National Gallery's Cupid Complaining to Venus, and the J. Paul Getty Museum's A Faun and his Family. The exhibition considers the possibility that these paintings were commissioned by a single patron, perhaps for the future Elector Johann Frederick, on the occasion of his marriage in 1527.

Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery, Somerset House, Strand, London