Abstraction and Concretization Of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil As Seen Through Biblical Interpretation and Art
Alyssa Ovadis
Department of Jewish Studies Faculty of Arts McGill University, Montreal
April 2010
A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts
© Alyssa Ovadis 2010
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ABSTRACT
This work examines the patterns inherent to the understanding of the nature of the forbidden fruit in an attempt to demonstrate parallels between the reasoning of biblical interpreters, on one hand, and of artists, on the other.
While the biblical text, in Gen. 2:16-17, offers an abstract portrayal by vaguely employing the word “fruit,” visual representations inevitably present a more concrete and less generic image by illustrating a specific fruit.
My research presents this phenomenon of abstraction and concretization through five chapters that exhibit the juxtaposition of the biblical text to its illustration: first, the representation of the Garden of Eden; second, the portrayal of the two trees, the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life; third, the presence of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge in those visual depictions; fourth, its absence; and fifth, typological references to the Forbidden Fruit within New Testament scenes.
RÉSUMÉ
Cet ouvrage examine les motifs inhérents à la compréhension de la nature du fruit défendu en tentant de démontrer des parallèles entre le raisonnement des interprètes bibliques d‟un côté, et celui des artistes de l‟autre.
Alors que le texte biblique de la Genèse 2:16-17 offre une représentation abstraite en employant vaguement le mot «fruit», les représentations visuelles, elles, présentent inévitablement une image plus concrète et moins générique en illustrant un fruit spécifique.
Ma recherche présente ce phénomène d‟abstraction et de concrétisation à travers cinq chapitres qui manifestent la juxtaposition entre le texte biblique et son illustration: en premier, la représentation du Jardin d‟Éden; en second, l‟image des deux arbres, l‟Arbre de la Connaissance et l‟Arbre de la Vie; en troisième, la présence du Fruit de l‟Arbre de la Connaissance dans ces représentations visuelles; en quatrième, son absence; et en cinquième, les références typologiques du Fruit Défendu à travers des scènes du Nouveau Testament.
iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract iii Illustrations v Acknowledgements viii Introduction 1 Chapter I. The Garden of Eden 6 “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” Hieronymus Bosch 6 “Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden,” Peter Wenzel 11 Chapter II. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life 16 “The Story of Adam and Eve,” Boucicaut Master 16 “Adam and Eve with the Tree of Life,” Guido di Graziano 26 “Adam and Eve,” Hans Sebald Beham 31 Chapter III. The Presence of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge 41 “Adam and Eve with the Serpent,” Illustration from the Raphael Bible 42 “Eve and the Apple with Counterpart,” Giuseppe Arcimboldo 47 “Temptation Eden,” Hunterian Psalter 54 Chapter IV: The Absence of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge 59 “Adam and Eve,” Domenichino 59 “Fall and Expulsion of Adam and Eve,” Michelangelo 61 Chapter V: Typological References to the Forbidden Fruit in New Testament Scenes 65 “Nativity and the Fall of Man,” Giulio Clovio 67 “The Temptation in the Desert,” La Chaise Dieu Abbey 71 “The Madonna of the Victory,” Andrea Mantegna 73 Conclusion 79 Appendix 82 Bibliography 117 v
ILLUSTRATIONS
Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Oil on wood triptych, 220 x 389 cm., c.1504. Museo del Prado, Madrid……………………………………………………7
Peter Wenzel, Adam and Eve. Oil on canvas, 336 x 247 cm., 18th or 19th century. Vatican Museums, Vatican City…………………………………………………………………..12
The Boucicaut Master, “Story of Adam and Eve,” in Concerning the Fates of Illustrious Men and Women. Tempera and gold on parchment, 42 x 29.6 cm., 1415. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles…………………………………………………………………....17
Guido di Graziano, “Adam and Eve and the Tree of Life,” in Tractatus de Creatione Mundi. Gold and tempera on parchment, 20.5 x 14.5 cm., c.1300. Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, Siena……………………………………………………………………..27
Hans Sebald Beham, Adam and Eve. Engraving, 8.2 x 5.7 cm., 1543. Private collection…………………………………………………………………………………32
Italian School, “Adam and Eve with the Serpent,” illustration from the Raphael Bible. Gouache over an etched base on paper, 31.5 x 34.6 cm., 18th century. Private collection…………………………………………………………………………………43
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Eve and the Apple with Counterpart. Oil on canvas, 43 x 35.5 cm. (each), 1578. Private Collection, Basle…………………………………………………..48
“Temptation in Eden,” detail from the Hunterian Psalter (MS. Hunter 229). c.1170. Glasgow University Library, Glasgow……………………………………...... 55
Domenichino, Adam and Eve. Oil on canvas, 68.6 x 54.6 cm., 1623-25. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Grenoble……………………………………………………………………60
Michelangelo, “Fall and Expulsion of Adam,” from the Sistine Chapel. Fresco, 1510. Sistine Chapel, Vatican……………………………………………..………………..…..62
Giulio Clovio, “Nativity and “The Fall of Man,” Farnese Hours. Vellum, 17.2 x 11 cm. (each), 1546. Pierpont Morgan Library, New York…………………………………...…68
La Chaise Dieu Abbey, The Temptation in the Desert. Tapestry, 1844. Abbaye de La Chaise-Dieu, La Chaise-Dieu…………………………………………………………….72
Andrea Mantegna, The Madonna of the Victory. Oil on canvas, 285 x 168 cm., 1496. Musée du Louvre, Paris…………………………………………………………………..74
Shaul Shapiro, Map of the Cultivated Landscapes of Biblical Israel. 1982 (This map is found in Michael Zohary‟s Plants of the Bible: A Complete Handbook to All the Plants with 200 Full-Colour Plates Taken in the Natural Habitat. This book does not include any further information on the source of this map) …..…………...……………………..85
Thomas Cole, The Garden of Eden. Oil on canvas, 97.8 x 134 cm., 1828. Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas……………………………………………………………..86 vi
Nicolas Poussin, The Spring. Adam and Eve in Paradise. Oil on canvas, 117 x 150 cm., 1660-64. Musée du Louvre, Paris………………………………………………………..87
Jan Brueghel the Elder, Garden of Eden. Oil on copper, 50.3 x 80.1 cm., 1612. Galleria Doria-Pamphili, Rome…………………………………………………………………...88
Limbourg Brothers, “Temptation, Fall and Expulsion,” in The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. Vellum, 29 x 21 cm., 1411-16. Musée Condé, Chantilly……………………...89
The Boucicaut Master, “Story of Adam and Eve,” in Concerning the Fates of Illustrious Men and Women. Tempera and gold on parchment, 42 x 29.6 cm., 1415. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles…………………………………………………………………....90
Charles Joseph Natoire, The Expulsion from Paradise. Oil on copper, 67.9 x 50.2 cm., 1740. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York………………………………………….91
“Adam and Eve,” in Boccaccio‟s De Claris Mulieribus. Woodcut, 26.6 x 19.8 cm., 1487. Bodleian Library, Oxford………………………………………………………………...92
“Adam and Eve, Eating the Apple and Being Expelled from Paradise,” in the Nuremberg Chronicles. Woodcut, 45 x 31 cm., 1493. Private Collection………………………..…..93
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Adam and Eve. Oil on panel, 172 x 63 cm. and 167 x 61 cm., 1528. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence………………………………………………….....94
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Adam and Eve. Oil on panel, 1508-10. Musée des Beaux-Arts et d‟Archéologie, Besançon………………………………………………………………...95
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Adam and Eve. Oil on panel, 117 x 80 cm., 1526. Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery, London……………………………………………………….....96
Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve. Oil on panel, 209 x 81 cm. (each), 1507. Museo del Prado, Madrid...... 97
Hans Baldung Grien, Adam and Eve. Oil on panel, 208 x 83.5 cm. (each), 1524. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest……………………………………………………………………98
Hendrik Goltzius, The Fall of Man. Oil on canvas, 104.5 x 138.4 cm., 1616. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C………………………………………………………...99
Hugo Van der Goes, Original Sin. Oil on panel, 35.5 x 23.2 cm., 1467-68. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna…………………………………………………….100
Jacopo Tintoretto, Adam and Eve. Oil on canvas, 220 x 150 cm., c. 1550. Gallerie dell‟Accademia, Venice………………………………………………………………...101
“Adam and Eve,” in the Codex Series nova 2612 (Speculum Humanae Salvationis). Coloured pen drawing, 28 x 20 cm., c.1336. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna…………………………………………………………………………………..102
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Jan Van Eyck, “Adam and Eve,” in the Ghent Altarpiece. Oil on wood. 213.3 x 32.3 cm. (each), 1432. Cathedral of St. Bavon, Ghent…………………………………………...103
“Temptation of Adam and Eve,” in Florence Miniature (MS. C2 Antiphonary). 1481. Museo dell‟ Opera del Duomo, Florence……………………………………………….104
“Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,” in the Codex Aemilianensis. 994. El Escorial, Real Biblioteca de San Lorenzo……………………...105
Master of Catherine of Cleves, “Even and the Virgin,” in the Hours of Catherine of Cleves. Vellum, 19.2 x 13 cm., c.1440. Morgan Library and Museum, New York……106
Berthold Furtmeyr, “Tree of Death and Life,” in the Salzburger Missale. 1481. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich……………………………….…………………..107
Fra Angelico, Altarpiece of the Annunciation. Tempera on panel, 154 x 194 cm., 1430-32. Museo del Prado, Madrid……………………………………………………………….108
Carlo Crivelli, The Annunciation. Oil on canvas, 207 x 146.7 cm., 1486. The National Gallery, London………………………………………………………………………...109
Petrus Christus, The Nativity. Oil on wood, 130 x 97 cm., c.1445. The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C…………………………………………………………………...110
Francesco Marmitta, Virgin and Child Flanked by Saints Benedict and Quentin. 220 x 138 cm., 1500-05. Musée du Louvre, Paris…………………………………………….111
Carlo Crivelli, Triptych of Camerino. Tempera on panel, 1482. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan……………………………………………………………………………………112
Carlo Crivelli, Virgin and Child Enthroned. Tempera on panel, 107 x 55 cm., c.1476. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest………………………………………………………...113
Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Virgin and Child Under the Apple Tree. Oil on canvas, 87 x 59 cm., c.1530. The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg……………………………….114
Petrus Christus, Madonna of the Dry Tree. Oil on wood, 17.4 x 12.4 cm., c.1465. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid…………………………………………………………..115
Westphalia School, Allegory of the Crucifixion. 28.5 x 18.5 cm., c.1400. Museo Thyssen- Bornemisza, Madrid…………………………………………………………………….116
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It is a pleasure to thank those who helped make this thesis possible.
First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to McGill Professor B. Barry Levy, my supervisor, whose valuable guidance and fascinating lectures on the Jewish History of Bible Interpretation have enabled me to complete this research.
I would like to thank Professor Vanessa Sasson of Marianopolis College, who has introduced me to the field of Religious Studies and encouraged my research on the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.
I am likewise grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, to McGill University, to the Jewish Studies Department and to the Grosser family for providing me with the financial means to work on my thesis.
I would also like to acknowledge the help of the Jewish Studies Department, and more specifically Stefka Iorgova, Administrative and Student Affairs Coordinator, and Eric Caplan, Chair of the Department.
It is important for me to thank my parents, Larissa and Igor, as well as my boyfriend, Mergen, for their consistent support and encouragement.
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INTRODUCTION
Religion in art and art in religion often attempt to create a meaningful interrelation between a text and its illustration. In fact, it seems as though the inner tendency of art is to attempt to express the idealistic philosophy of religion in a concrete manner. By doing so, art inevitably concretizes that which is abstracted by the word and thus ignores the very privilege of abstraction that both the spoken and written words possess over the visual image. The relationship between the Bible and art is equivalent to that between a text and its illustration.
There is however a complexity in this simple concept, a complexity that manifests itself as soon as the text and its illustration separate and begin their autonomous coexistence.
The interpretative material surrounding the Bible embodies this coexistence. When, within this biblical context, a text and its illustration separate from one another, both entities find themselves reiterating what appear as the same elements of a story, but what in fact have become different and changed elements of that same story. The biblical story of Adam and Eve is an intriguing incarnation of this autonomous coexistence, and one that seems to have kept a familiarity with us through the illustration of the text rather than through the text itself. The divergence between the two is mainly associated with the game of abstraction and concretization that occurs with regards to the interpretation of
Genesis‟ “fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil”. The interpretation of this fruit, or perhaps its misinterpretation, is essential to the understanding of the underlying meaning of this biblical story. Its manifestation in visual culture forms the very crossroad that brings the text and its illustration together and then scatters 2 them once again in different directions. The visibility of this crossroad, however, is often obscured by our lack of knowledge of the primary source - the biblical text itself. We often see the image prior to reading the text and our perception of the latter, after having been exposed to the former, remains faithfully attached to it.
The forbidden fruit, whose eating God prohibits in verses 2:16-17 of
Genesis, “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, „Of every tree of the garden you are free to eat; but as for the tree of knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat of it; for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die‟”1 is ironically and, despite this prohibition, the dominant ingredient of the story of Adam and Eve, though the nature of this ingredient is not revealed in the text. Only the word
“fruit” appears, but no specific fruit is named. The game of abstraction and concretization begins here. While the biblical text offers an abstract portrayal by vaguely employing the word “fruit,” visual representations, on the other hand, inevitably present a more concrete and less generic image by illustrating a specific fruit.
At the very beginning of Genesis, the reader is already faced with a mystery, a mystery that leads to question the nature of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Interestingly, whilst the reader inquires the fruit‟s identity, the characters of the story, Adam and Eve, are also focusing on this fruit. Having been forbidden to eat of it, they are obviously tempted by it. Likewise, the reader is tempted to discover the identity of the fruit, seeing that it has been concealed
1 JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh: The Traditional Hebrew Text and the New JPS Translation, Pocket edition, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003) Gen. 2:16-17. 3 from him. What has resulted from Adam and Eve‟s temptation is well known: they ate the forbidden fruit and God banished them from the Garden of Eden. As for the reader, the following research will attempt to solve this mystery through an in-depth study of the textual and visual material referring to the biblical story of
Adam and Eve.
There are many ways to approach the Bible. This research examines two of them: textual interpretation, through Jewish Bible commentaries, and visual interpretation, through Christian art. By looking at these two forms of interpretation, I do not dare to compare them or claim that they must always be discussed together, but I rather intend to juxtapose them for the sole purpose of analysing the meaning produced by this juxtaposition with regards to the interpretation of the forbidden fruit. It should be noted here that the emphasis of this research lies precisely in the analysis of primary sources rather than in a discussion of the theoretical framework pertaining to them. Textually, the writings of both Jewish and Christian interpreters will be studied. Though the overall perspective of this research is based on Jewish interpretation, some relevant
Christian interpretation will also be presented, especially in the last chapter, which will be entirely devoted to Christian typological interpretation. With regards to visual representations, it is important to mention that the depictions that will be studied throughout this research are limited to those taken from Christian art of the Medieval and Renaissance periods. The reason for this is quite simple:
Christian paintings of Adam and Eve are rich examples of a visual form of biblical interpretation. Seeing that it was in those two periods that religious art flourished and that the Christian Church commissioned the largest amount of 4 works belonging to this genre, these visual representations of Adam and Eve exhibit incredible variety. Even though it is also possible to find interesting
Jewish art on the topic, the generally abstract style of these works as well as their seldom representation of the forbidden fruit suggest that very few Jewish depictions of Adam and Eve are as relevant to this research as the Christian works on this topic. Furthermore, with regards to the relationship between text and illustration, it is hard to ignore the collaboration between the Hebrew Bible and
Christian religious art, and the notion that Christian artists are important actors in the retelling of Jewish biblical stories.
While the roots of the following research are formed by the history of the interpretation of Gen. 2:16-17, its structure is inspired by the art history surrounding these same verses. Contrary to chronological order, the subject is approached by its visual interpretation. This enables to present the textual interpretation through the visual, thus using each proposed work of art as a point of departure to initiate further discussion. Separated into five parts, this analysis will examine the patterns inherent to the understanding of the nature of the forbidden fruit in an attempt to create parallels between the reasoning of biblical interpreters on one hand, and of artists on the other. Each chapter is a discussion on a separate aspect of the story, presenting those paintings that concern it, along with the parallel and contrasting biblical interpretations. The first chapter will deal with the representation of the Garden of Eden; the second, with the portrayal of the two trees: the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life; the third, with the Presence of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in 5 those visual depictions; the fourth, with its Absence; and the fifth, with
Typological References to the Forbidden Fruit in New Testament scenes.
6
CHAPTER I: The Garden of Eden
As we enter the Garden of Eden, we are faced with those words that describe it in Genesis: “The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east” […]
And from the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that was pleasing to the sight and good for food […] A river issues from Eden to water the garden, and it then divides and becomes four branches.”2 From these few sentences, the reader may already begin to imagine a certain garden. Seeing that this garden forms the context and the environment of the story of Adam and Eve, it reflects our visual perception of this entire story, rather than reflecting our perception of the garden alone. In our minds, the Garden of Eden cannot exist without Adam, Eve, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree of Life. And so, the Garden of Eden is that, without which it cannot exist: the two characters and the two trees that inhabit it.
The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymus Bosch
Bosch‟s early sixteenth century triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights3 represents the biblical world in an unusual manner, as an explosion of heaven and hell, pleasure and sin, colour and darkness… The left panel of the triptych depicts the Garden of Eden and its environment. With Adam and Eve in the foreground, the garden is presented as a pure oasis, with fruitful trees and exotic animals. The trees that appear in Bosch‟s Garden of Eden exhibit variety and originality.
Whether they faithfully present those trees that may have grown in the biblical
2 Ibid. Gen. 2:8-10. 3 Roger Van Schoute. Jérome Bosch (Tournai: Renaissance du Livre, 2003) 144-145.
7
Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, c.1504
8 land during the biblical period is another question. According to the text, the
Garden of Eden contains “every tree that was pleasing to the sight and good for food.”4 The fig tree, whose leaves appear at the end of the story of Adam and Eve, is the only tree that is referred to “by name” in the story, but the wide selection of books on the topic of fruits in the Bible suggests an incredible variety of fruit trees, vegetables, field crops, garden plants, wild herbs, forest trees and flowers that seem to have been present during the biblical period. This important presence of botany in the biblical text mirrors the abundance of these plants in the area, and suggests the interest that the biblical authors had towards them. Bosch‟s triptych clearly exhibits this abundance of vegetation, both through the work‟s dominance of green colour and the presence of various giant fruits.
“The Bible opens with a poetic and stylized account of creation but then comes another creation story. This story is set in a place, a garden in Eden, a region, which from the perspective of the narrator, is in the east.”5 A map of the agriculture of the Bible6 complements this information by creating an illustration of the cultivated lands of the Bible. The distribution, along this map, of the symbols for forest, wheat, barley, vine, olive, pomegranate, fig, date palm, carob, balm, papyrus, sycomore and acacia and desert vegetation, suggests that the
“Holy Land” (that is, the land of Judah and the land of Israel) had all these plants
(trees, fruits, crops, etc.) concentrated in one area; and so, in comparison to the
4 JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh: The Traditional Hebrew Text and the New JPS Translation, Pocket edition, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003) Gen.2:9. 5Oxford Bible Atlas. Edited by Adrian Curtis, 4th ed. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, c.2007) 3-4. 6 Michael Zohary. Plants of the Bible: A Complete Handbook to All the Plants with 200 Full- Colour Plates Taken in the Natural Habitat (London; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982) 37 [Appendix 1] 9 rest of the land that is represented on this map, the “Holy Land” may be seen as a form of agricultural oasis.
“Very few would seek to place Eden on a map, seeing it as belonging to the realm of myth, but it is noteworthy that it does reflect a geographic interest, both in the indication of the direction („east‟) and in the description of the river which flowed out of Eden, its four branches, and where they flowed.”7 Even though the Garden of Eden is thought to have been located on a different part of the map, closer to the Tigris and the Euphrates, the garden‟s vegetation most likely reflects that of the biblical land, seeing that it probably mirrors the biblical author‟s environment, “What matters is not whether something happened but whether it is given a real rather than fictional geographical setting, and whether it is possible to use a knowledge of geography and archaeology to illuminate the context in which the story is set.”8 It is very possible that the trees God planted in the Garden of Eden were the fruit-trees that were most important to the people of the biblical period. This is the case of the fig tree, whose presence in the garden is certain. According to this logic, the fruits of the Garden of Eden are those which were most common to the biblical land, “Fruit was of special importance because it could be stored in times of plenty to assuage hunger in times of want […]
Widely consumed were the various by-products of fruit, such as wine – made from grapes and pomegranates – and honey, made from dates, figs, and grapes.”9
7 Oxford Bible Atlas. Edited by Adrian Curtis, 4th ed. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, c.2007) 4. 8 Ibid. 4. 9 Michael Zohary. Plants of the Bible: A Complete Handbook to All the Plants with 200 Full- Colour Plates Taken in the Natural Habitat (London; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982) 53. 10
In his Garden of Eden, Bosch does not depict all these “biblical trees”; the fig tree, the vine tree, the olive tree, the pomegranate tree, and many others, do not appear among the trees of this garden. The garden illustrated by Bosch in this work is different. The date-palm, one of the “biblical trees”, appears at the far right of the painting; several apple trees with bright red apples stand in the middle ground; and many unidentifiable green trees are in the background. Despite these previously mentioned trees, Bosch‟s garden does not attempt to be realistic but appears to be imaginary. In the foreground, near Adam and Eve, there is a very unusual tree, “autour duquel s‟enroulent des tiges de framboisiers, de mûriers et de fraisiers.”10 This tree does not exist in Europe, it comes from the Canary islands and is called dracaena draco, “Cet arbre aux branches renflées pousse lentement et peut vivre très longtemps. Des touffes de feuilles réunies au bout des branches emergent de longues inflorescences garnies de petites fleurs blanches qui donneront des fruit rouges. Bosch a représenté cet arbre exotique au moment de la floraison avec assez de precision.”11 There is therefore juxtaposition between the exotic and the traditional in terms of the trees that are depicted in this painting. For Bosch, who lived in the Netherlands, the date-palm and the
Dracaena draco are clearly exotic trees, whereas the apple trees and the many green trees in the background are traditional and “normal.” The left panel of
Bosch‟s triptych, therefore, is an interesting manner of illustrating the Garden of
Eden. Although it does not correspond to our traditional perception of the biblical
10 “around it are wrapped raspberry, blackberry and strawberry stems”, Roger Van Schoute. Jérome Bosch (Tournai: Renaissance du Livre, 2003) 149. 11 “This tree with rounded branches grows slowly and can live for a very long time. Tufts of leaves, which are joined at the edges of the branches come up from long inflorescences that are full of small white flowers, which will produce red fruits. Bosch represented this exotic tree while it flourishes, with quite some precision.” Ibid. 149. 11 land, this garden may in fact be very close to the “true” idea of the Garden of
Eden, that of a fantastic garden. This, in fact, corresponds to Abraham Ibn Ezra‟s interpretation of Genesis. He describes the uniqueness of the two trees: the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, “God made the trees grow from the ground throughout the world and he did the same in the Garden of Eden, but there he placed two trees not anywhere else in the world.”12 And so, the lack of realism and the uniqueness of Bosch‟s garden may in fact be the “proper” way of illustrating this wonderful garden planted by God.
Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, Peter Wenzel
Eighteenth century Austrian artist Peter Wenzel‟s painting13 depicts the
Garden of Eden in a naturalistic manner and one that is also quite stereotypical.
Adam and Eve are near the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; Eve is giving the forbidden fruit to Adam. This painting presents the two characters in a beautiful garden, with many animals around them. Adam and Eve look relaxed, they were given this garden to “to till it and tend it”14 and they seem to be in full possession of it. The pseudepigraphal text “The Life of Adam and Eve” gives an interesting perspective on the garden and on the relation of this setting to each of the characters; this perspective contrasts enormously with this painting.
12 Abraham ben Meïr Ibn Ezra. Ibn Ezra’s Commentary on the Pentateuch. Translated and annotated by H. Norman Strickman & Arthur M. Silver (New York, N.Y.: Menorah Pub. Co., c.1988) 54. 13 Carlo Pietrangeli. Les Peintures du Vatican (Paris: Éditions Place des Victoires, 2001) 550. 14 JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh: The Traditional Hebrew Text and the New JPS Translation, Pocket edition, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003) Gen.2:15. 12
Peter Wenzel, Adam and Eve, 18th or 19th century
13
In the “Greek Life of Adam and Eve,” Eve recounts what happened in the
Garden of Eden, “It happened while we were guarding Paradise, each his portion allotted from God […] the devil came into Adam‟s portion, where the male animals were, since God divided the animals among us, and all the males he gave to your father, and all the females to me, and each of us kept his own.”15 In the
“Latin Life of Adam and Eve,” Adam also recounts the events of his past, “God gave a part of Paradise to me and (a part) to your mother. The trees of the eastern part and over against the north he gave to me, and to your mother he gave the southern and western parts. The Lord God appointed two angels to guard us.”16
The assumption that Adam and Eve each had a portion of the garden allotted to them from God is an unusual extension of Gen. 2:15 “The Lord God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden, to till it and tend it.” 17
The representation of the garden in Wenzel‟s painting clearly contrasts with this view. Not only are Adam and Eve represented together, near the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil, but the animals are also represented together. They are not separated in two parts, males on one hand and females on the other. The male and female lions, the male and female swans, the male and female parrots, etc. are all together. Wenzel was obviously not aware of this pseudepigraphal extension of the text. The biblical text does not mention anything about a separation of the garden into two parts and about the notion that the trees and the animals on each part were allotted to Adam or to Eve. All other artworks that
15 James H. Charlesworth. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Volume 2. 1st ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983-85) [Greek Apocalypse of Moses 15:2-3] 277. 16 Ibid. [Latin Life of Adam and Eve 32:2-33:1] 270-272. 17 JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh: The Traditional Hebrew Text and the New JPS Translation, Pocket edition, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003) Gen. 2:15. 14 present the Garden of Eden, such as Thomas Cole‟s 1828 The Garden of Eden,18
Nicolas Poussin‟s seventeen century The Spring. Adam and Eve in Paradise19 or
Jan Brueghel‟s 1612 The Garden of Eden,20 likewise follow the biblical text.
Division is nonexistent in Poussin‟s work, Spring. Adam and Eve in Paradise depicts harmony: “It is a peaceful, blossoming landscape with wonderful trees and bushes, a river, and a mountain in the background. Only a few animals are seen: swans on the surface of the river of Paradise. The Creation of the world is finished, and God is seen high in the sky blessing his work.”21
The painter of this artwork is therefore not alone in being unaware of the curious configuration of the Garden of Eden, as it appears in the “Life of Adam and Eve”. Many other artists depicted the Garden of Eden, and even though it may seem that there is a certain redundancy in its depiction of this biblical garden, there is also some variety, ”Van der Goes spangled his verdant setting with floral symbols. Dürer added beasts representing the four Humors of man about to be unleashed to plague him forever, whereas other artists, such as Michelangelo, preferred to show us a barren and sterile landscape of Eden appropriate for the evil act.”22 Most representations present a garden that has a clear European style.
In the Middle Ages, as in the Brothers Limbourg‟s fifteenth century Temptation,
18 Thomas Cole: Landscape into History. Edited by William H. Truettner and Alan Wallach; With Essays by Christine Stansell and Sean Wilentz ... [et al.] (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press; Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1994) 45 [Appendix 2]. 19 Poussin and Nature: Arcadian Visions. Ed. by Pierre Rosenberg and Keith Christiansen; essays by Keith Christiansen ... [et al.]; catalogue by Pierre Rosenberg (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, c.2008) 294 [Appendix 3]. 20 Web Gallery of Art. 9 January 2010.
Fall and Expulsion23 or the Boucicaut Master‟s fifteenth century The Story of
Adam and Eve,24 it is usually presented as a small medieval garden, surrounded by a wall with a gate, “In the oldest representations, the earthly Paradise was clearly interpreted as a well-tended garden encircled by high walls […] Western iconography developed a vision of the earthly Paradise as „God‟s park‟, enclosed by high crenellated walls and blooming with rosebushes.”25 Interestingly, in the
“Life of Adam and Eve,” the Garden of Eden also has a gate and a wall around the garden – the wall of paradise. Later, it is usually a vast green park or a forest extending in all directions, with no visible boundaries, “In later centuries, artists discarded the idea of the wall, preferring a wilder landscape in which the figures of Adam and Eve became gradually smaller.”26
23 Timothy B. Husband. The Art of Illumination: the Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008) 294 [Appendix 5]. 24 Chefs-d’Oeuvres du J.Paul Getty Museum: Manuscrits Enluminés (Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1997) 75 [Appendix 6]. 25 Rosa Giorgi. Angels and Demons in Art. Edited by Stefano Zuffi and Translated by Rosanna M. Giammanco Frongia (Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Trust Publications, 2003) 14. 26 Ibid. 14. 16
CHAPTER II: The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life
Having already entered the Garden of Eden, we may now slowly walk towards the two wonderful trees that God planted in this garden: the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life, “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, „Of every tree of the garden you are free to eat; but as for the tree of knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat of it; for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die‟.”27 The image deriving from these few verses is that the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life are two very special trees, probably growing beside one another, at the very centre of the garden.
“The Story of Adam and Eve,” Boucicaut Master
The Boucicaut Master‟s “The Story of Adam and Eve,”28 taken from the
French illuminated manuscript Concerning the Fates of Illustrious Men and
Women and representing the story of Adam and Eve, depicts an enclosed garden where Adam and Eve stand at each side of a tree. This tree is depicted as being literally in the midst of the garden. The fact that this garden is entirely visible within this one image permits us to see that the tree whose fruit Adam and Eve eat is indeed located at the centre of the Garden of Eden. With most other visual representations of the story of Adam and Eve, we scarcely see the entire garden in the work, only a part of it, and so, we may never truly know if the tree that is
27 JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh: The Traditional Hebrew Text and the New JPS Translation, Pocket edition, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003) Gen. 2:16-17. 28 Chefs-d‟Oeuvres du J.Paul Getty Museum: Manuscrits Enluminés (Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1997) 75. 17
The Boucicaut Master, “Story of Adam and Eve,” in Concerning the Fates of Illustrious Men and Women, c.1415
18 represented at the centre of the image is in fact also the tree that is in the centre of the garden. In this illuminated manuscript, however, the two coincide.
Another advantage of looking at this manuscript, is the small size of the garden. The fact that it is presented in such a compact manner, makes the viewer see everything else that is in the garden, besides this one tree. And so, in a work such as Charles Joseph Natoire‟s 1740 The Expulsion from Paradise29 we see the
Tree of Knowledge in front of us and can easily imagine that the Tree of Life, which is also in the garden, is simply located somewhere backstage, that is, beyond the frame of the painting; perhaps because it does not belong to the given scene. With this manuscript illumination, however, we are obviously faced with a problem: there is only one tree in the midst of the garden- the Tree of Knowledge.
But where is the other tree? The initial image that we have imagined of the two trees standing next to each other in the midst of the Garden of Eden unfortunately does not commonly appear in art. For some reason, we usually only see one of the trees, and it is mainly the Tree of Knowledge, “Les deux arbres finiront par être représentés dans l‟iconographie chrétienne comme un seul arbre aux côtés duquel, comme deux orants, se trouvent Adam et Ève.”30 This is an interesting issue, and in fact, even the biblical text itself and the surrounding interpretations of it, are not entirely clear as to what truly is the location and the position of the two trees.
The issue of location is already addressed somewhat in “The Life of Adam and Eve,” where the Garden of Eden is separated in two parts, with the South and
29 ARTstor Digital Library. 9 January 2010.
West belonging to Eve and the North and East belonging to Adam. But a statement on the division of the garden into two, and more importantly, of the trees of the garden, “The trees of the eastern part and over against the north he gave to me, and to your mother he gave the southern and western parts”31 challenges, and possibly even contradicts the biblical account, “And from the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that was pleasing to the sight and good for food, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and bad.”32 There always seems to be a doubt about the location of the Tree of Life and of the Tree of Knowledge. Although, it is important to be aware of the fact that Genesis has two indications regarding the location of the Tree of Knowledge. The first, quoted above, is in Gen. 2:7; the second, in Gen. 3:3, is more specific since Eve speaks of the Tree of Knowledge as “the tree in the middle of the garden.”33 In the “Life of Adam and Eve,” however, the characters of Adam and Eve each possess the trees, which are on their respective parts. On whose part, then, are the Tree of Knowledge and the
Tree of Life? If they are both in the middle of the garden, as we are told in the biblical text, then to whom does the middle belong? The passage taken from
Eve‟s tale seems to answer this question. All the trees on Eve‟s side lost their leaves except the fig tree - this suggests that the fig tree was also on Eve‟s portion of the garden. According to this pseudepigraphal text, the fig tree is the tree from which she ate – thus, the Tree of Knowledge is located on her part of the garden.
31 James H. Charlesworth. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Volume 2. 1st ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983-85) [The Latin Life of Adam and Eve 32:2] 270. 32 JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh: The Traditional Hebrew Text and the New JPS Translation, Pocket edition, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003) Gen. 2:9. 33 Ibid. Gen. 3:3. 20
This seems to imply that perhaps God purposefully placed the Tree of Knowledge on her territory, knowing that she would be the one to first transgress his command. If not, then why could it not have been on Adam‟s part, or better even, in a common neutral territory? This is not clear, but “The Life of Adam and Eve” does present a different perspective of the biblical narrative. Nowhere in chapters two or three of Genesis is there any mention of God allotting a part of the garden to Adam and the other to Eve.
Another interesting interpretation appears in “III Baruch,” where it is not
God but the angels who are planting the trees of the Garden of Eden. God commanded Michael to gather two hundred thousand and three angels to plant the
Garden of Eden, “Michael planted the olive and Gabriel, the apple; Uriel, the nut;
Raphael, the melon; and Satanael, the vine. For at first his name in former times was Satanael, and similarly all the angels planted various trees.”34 When Baruch questions the angel about the forbidden fruit, the angel answers, “In the first place, the tree was the vine, but secondly, the tree (is) sinful desire which Satanael spread over Eve and Adam, and because of this God has cursed the vine because
Satanael had planted it, and by that he deceived the protoplast Adam and Eve.‟35
The belief that God commanded Michael to gather angels in order to plant the
Garden of Eden and that each tree was planted by a different angel is interesting and also humorous, if seen in contrast to Genesis, where “from the ground” God simply “caused to grow every tree that was pleasing to the sight and good for
34 James H. Charlesworth. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Volume 1. 1st ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983-85) [Slavonic Apocalypse of Baruch 4:7] 666. 35 Ibid. [Slavonic Apocalypse of Baruch 4:8] 666. 21 food.”36 The notion that the vine is the Tree of Knowledge and that Satanel is the one who planted this tree inevitably raises a chronological issue. Did Satanael first plant the vine and did God then label it as the Tree of Knowledge? Or did God ask
Satanael to plant the Tree of Knowledge, and to make it a vine? Also, when it is said that “Michael planted the olive and Gabriel, the apple; Uriel, the nut;
Raphael, the melon; and Satanael, the vine […] and similarly all the angels planted various trees”37 does this imply that that there was only one of each tree or that each angel planted a different species of tree? The latter would imply that
Satanel planted many vines and not only one vine. This is an interesting observation because it might then suggest that the Tree of Knowledge is not a unique tree but that it is a species of trees. And so, with regards to the location of the Tree of Life and of the Tree of Knowledge, perhaps the Tree of Life was in the midst of the garden (as it is said in Gen. 2:9), whereas the Trees of Knowledge were scattered all over the garden (but the one that Eve happened to eat from in
Gen. 3:3 was one that was also in the midst of the garden).
The location of the two trees is also discussed by the Hellenistic-Jewish writer Philo in his Allegorical Interpretation. The text of Genesis clearly specifies that the first tree (the Tree of Life) is in the midst of the garden; however, it does not describe the location of the second (the Tree of Knowledge). Gen. 3:3 nevertheless presents the tree that is in the midst of the garden as being the one that is forbidden. Although this specific contradiction is not present in Philo‟s
36 JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh: The Traditional Hebrew Text and the New JPS Translation, Pocket edition, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003) Gen. 2:9. 37 James H. Charlesworth. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Volume 1. 1st ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983-85) [Slavonic Apocalypse of Baruch 4:7] 666. 22 discussion; he does, however, question the location of the Tree of Knowledge, “as to the other tree, that of knowing good and evil, he has not made it clear whether it is within or without the garden.”38 This brings him to conclude that the tree is both inside and outside of the garden, and that the reason why its specific location is left unsaid is “to prevent the man unversed in natural philosophy from regarding with wonder the spot where that knowledge dwells.”39 Moreover, he states that it cannot be in the garden “for if He bids them eat of every tree in the garden, but not to eat of this one, it is evident that it is not in the garden: and this is quite naturally so: for actually as I have said, it is there, and virtually it is not.”40
Rashi, faithful to the peshat method, which characterizes the Northern
French exegesis of the second half of the 11th century and onwards, understands the biblical text in a literal manner and does not question the location or the position of the two trees, he simply reiterates what the biblical text says about the position of the Tree of Knowledge in the middle of the garden: “in the midst of the garden means in the very centre of the garden.”41
Maimonides, philosopher of the 12th century, offers an interesting description of the Tree of Knowledge. He states that it has a size that corresponds
38 F.H. Colson and G.H. Walker. Philo (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: Heinemann, 1961-71) 185. 39 Ibid. 185. 40 Ibid. 213. 41 Pentateuch with Targum Onkelos, Haphtoroth and RaSHI's Commentary. Translated into English and annotated by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, in collaboration with A. Blashki and L. Joseph (New York: Hebrew Publishing Co., 1934) 10. 23 to “a walk of five hundred years” and that “all the waters of the Beginning spring up from beneath it.”42
With Nachmanides, the interpretation is more systematic. The 13th century
Catalan biblical commentator questions the location of the two trees and concludes that since they are referred to as being in the midst of the garden this must signify that “it was a known place in the garden which was „in the midst of the garden‟.”43 He also says that if both trees were in the middle of the garden, they must be set apart from the others, “we must say that in the middle of the garden there was the likeness of an enclosed garden-bed made which contained these two trees.”44
The Zohar, the main literary work of kabbalistic Bible interpretation of the
Medieval period, contains certain allusions to the story of Adam and Eve. These esoteric allusions are linked to two concepts that are inherent to kabbalistic thought, the sefirot (the 10 attributes through which God reveals himself) and the
Shekhinah (divine presence). The association of the sefirot with the Tree of Life and of the Shekhinah with the Tree of Knowledge is based on the location and on the position of these two trees, “the Tree of knowledge was planted precisely in the middle of the garden. Furthermore, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil symbolizes Shekhinah, who is not precisely in the middle but rather tends toward
42 Moses Maimonides. The Guide of the Perplexed. Translated with an introduction and notes by Shlomo Pines, with an introductory essay by Leo Strauss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963) 357. 43 Nachmanides. Commentary on the Torah. Translated and annotated with index by Charles B. Chavel (New York: Shilo Pub. House, 1971-76) 71. 44 Ibid. 71. 24 the left side of the sefirot.”45 The identification of the two trees as the Shekhinah and the sefirot comes from their interrelationship, “Shekhinah is called the tree of knowledge of good and evil because She imbibes from both sides of the sefirot, the sweet right side and the bitter left side.”46 Even in Genesis, the strong connection between the two trees, as well as their uniqueness, is reiterated by the notion that they are both in the midst of the garden, and that they were planted together, or at the same time. In the Zohar, however, this connection seems to reach another, more esoteric level, “Shekhinah is given this name because anyone who partakes of Her alone separates Her from the other sefirot, thereby cutting off the vivifying flow of emanation, which is replaced by a deadly potion.”47
According to the Zohar, the fruits of the two trees must thus be eaten together and not separated from one another.
Arama‟s 15th century commentary on Genesis contains a long discussion on the two trees. He specifies, like many others, the important connection between them. He views the proximity of the two trees to one another as suggesting an interrelation: “the tree of knowledge was to practical reason what the tree of life was to speculative reason. Its position near the tree of life was to point out that everything it stood for should be placed in the service of the tree of life.”48
Abarbanel, of the same century, likewise has a lengthy discussion on the story of the Fall of Man. He raises several questions with regards to this passage,
45 The Zohar. Translation and Commentary by Daniel C. Matt (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004) 220. 46 Ibid. 220. 47 Ibid. 222. 48 Isaac ben Moses Arama. Akeydat Yitzchak: Commentary of Rabbi Yitzchak Arama on the Torah. Translated and condensed by Eliyahu Munk. 3rd rev. ed. (Jerusalem; New York: Lambda Publishers, c.2001) 31. 25 and then attempts to answer them. He questions why it is not explicitly said that the Tree of Knowledge was in the midst of the garden, but it is only implied, “For what reason doesn‟t the text say „in the midst of the garden‟ about both of them, and it only says it about the tree of life?”49 Yet even in his answers, the questions often remain unanswered and he often ends his discussion stating his lack of understanding.
Written in the 16th century, the Midrash of Rabbi Moshe Alshich on the
Torah has an interesting interpretation of certain recurring aspects of the story of the Fall of Man. As those before him, he stresses the importance of the two trees saying that the fact that the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life are said to be situated in the midst of the garden is significant because it would appear meaningless “unless the idea conveyed is that these two trees are of crucial importance to all other trees.”50
Among the works of Jewish Bible interpretation in the eighteenth century is Yaakov Culi‟s MeAm Lo’ez. This work addresses verses 2:16-17 of Genesis with respect to the position of the two trees. Culi tries to justify the idea that both trees were in the centre of the garden, “One possibility is that both trees actually had a single trunk that was in the precise centre of the garden. It then divided into two trees, each with different characteristics.”51 Another view that he mentions is that “the Tree of Life was in the exact centre of the garden. It was surrounded by the Tree of Knowledge. The branches and fruit of the Tree of Knowledge covered
49 Isaac Abarbanel. Perush ‘al ha-Torah (Jerusalem: Bene Arbal, 1963 or 1964) 81. 50 Moses Alshekh. Midrash of Rabbi Moshe Alshich on the Torah. Translated and annotated by Eliyahu Munk (Brooklyn: Lambda, 2000) 29-30. 51 Yaakov Culi. The Torah Anthology: MeAm Lo’ez. Translated by Aryeh Kaplan. 1st ed. (New York: Moznaim Pub. Co., c.1978) 247. 26 the Tree of Life so that the two appeared as one tree.”52 This interpretation is the one that seems to correspond to the visual representations that we have seen and to those that we are still going to see. Culi‟s attempt to justify and to understand the biblical paradox of the two trees is very similar to the artists‟ attempt to depict these two trees in a clear manner, that is, by combining them or interchanging them. We usually see only one tree, either the Tree of Knowledge or the Tree of
Life and it is quite possible that they have simply been combined seeing that they are both important and deserve more attention than the other trees of the Garden of Eden and seeing that, perhaps indirectly, they have both been forbidden to eat from.
“Adam and Eve with the Tree of Life,” Guido di Graziano
Guido di Graziano‟s “Adam and Eve with the Tree of Life”53 from the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries Siennese Tractatus de Creatione Mundi, is an interesting representation of a scene that is now quite familiar to us. The two characters appear at each side of a tree, and they are covering themselves with fig leaves. What is interesting, however, is that this familiar scene is actually quite unusual. The Tree of Knowledge, which usually appears in such paintings, has been replaced by the Tree of Life. As we have seen, the Tree of Life rarely appears in Adam and Eve artworks. The Tree of Knowledge is usually seen as the focus of the story since it is from this tree that God has forbidden the two characters to eat and it is from this tree that they do eat. We have also seen,
52 Ibid. 247. 53 Aiwaz. Guido di Graziano. 9 January 2010.
Guido di Graziano, “Adam and Eve and the Tree of Life,” in Tractatus de Creatione Mundi, c.1300
28 however, that there is an incredible ambiguity between the location, position and interrelation of these two trees. Some interpreters see them as one tree and others see them as two very different trees.
In the “Apocalypse of Sedrach” Sedrach (also known as Hananiah, one of the three youths thrown into the fiery furnace in the Book of Daniel) questions the decision of God regarding Adam. This dialogue between God and Sedrach is interesting in that the forbidden fruit, as it appears in this text, is surprisingly that of the Tree of Life, rather than that of the Tree of Knowledge, “God said to him,
„I created the first man, Adam, and placed him in Paradise in the midst of (which is) the tree of life, and I said to him, „Eat of all the fruit, only beware of the tree of life, for if you eat from it you will surely die.‟”54
David Kimhi‟s writings of the 12th and 13th centuries support the notion that it was rather the Tree of Knowledge that was forbidden. Kimhi writes that the story of the Garden of Eden has “meaning both as literal peshat, but [it also has] a hidden meaning which is subject to understanding by people probing the text of the Torah more deeply.”55 With regards to God‟s prohibition, he describes it as a dual commandment, “the positive commandment being to eat the other fruit in order to keep healthy, and to shun the fruit of the tree of knowledge precisely for the same reason, as it would prove extremely harmful.”56 Unlike many earlier interpreters, Kimhi notices that the command of God is only directed towards the eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, but not towards the fruit of the Tree
54 James H. Charlesworth. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Volume 1. 1st ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983-85) [Apocalypse of Sedrach 4:4] 610. 55 Hachut Hameshulash: Commentaries on the Torah by Rabbeinu Chananel, Rabbi Sh’muel ben Meir (Rash’bam), Rabbi David Kimchi (R’dak), Rabbi Ovadiah Seforno. Translated and annotated by Eliyahu Munk (New York; Jerusalem: Lambda Publishers, 2003) 90. 56 Ibid. 97. 29 of Life, “G‟d had not forbidden Adam to eat from the fruit of the tree of life, but on the contrary, the fruit of this tree was included in the instruction to eat „from all the trees of the garden you shall surely eat.‟”57
In the 1989 JPS Torah Commentary on Genesis, Nahum Sarna notices that at first, the Tree of Knowledge seems to be less important than the Tree of Life since the Tree of Life is mentioned first and the Tree of Knowledge “gives the appearance of being an appendage to the verse;”58 however, “as the narrative unfolds, the sequence is reversed. Only the „tree of knowledge‟ comes into focus, only its fruit is prohibited, only it is mentioned in the subsequent dialogues.”59
Sarna attempts to do that which Cassuto considered impossible with regards to this text, that is, to seek certain parallels between the story of Adam and Eve and pagan literature of the time. For him, the sequence in which the Tree of
Knowledge and the Tree of Life appear in the narrative, as well as their respective importance to the story, is significant. The shift of emphasis in the presentation of the two trees “signals another breach with the central pagan theme of man‟s quest for immortality, as illustrated for example, in the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh Epic and the Story of Adapa. It is not the mythical pursuit of eternal life but the relationship between God and man that is the primary concern here.”60 Sarna interprets the expression “knowledge of good and evil” as a merism: “it is more satisfactory, however, to understand „good and bad‟ as undifferentiated parts of a
57 Ibid. 98. 58 Nahum M. Sarna. Genesis = Be-reshit: the Traditional Hebrew Text with New JPS Translation. Commentary by Nahum M. Sarna. 1st ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989) 18. 59 Ibid. 18. 60 Ibid. 18. 30 totality, a merism meaning „everything.”61 He is aware that Adam and Eve do not become omniscient, but he maintains that the “text does seem to imply that their intellectual horizons are immeasurably expanded.”62 There is a foreshadowing of the dietary laws in this command, “this prohibition is the paradigm for the future
Torah legislation relating to the dietary laws,”63 and perhaps a foreshadowing of all other laws of the Torah as well. Sarna states that Eve “introduces into her own mind the suggestion of an unreasonably strict God”64 by assuming that she must not eat but also not touch the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.
Another interesting approach in resolving the ambiguity of the story of the
Garden of Eden and more specifically of the importance and position of the two trees, is to look at the story of the Garden of Eden as a combination of two stories: one story has the Tree of Life and the other story has the Tree of Death (or the
Tree of Knowledge). This view exists among several interpreters and is discussed by James George Frazer in his Folklore in the Old Testament: Studies in
Comparative Religion, Legend and Law. He states that initially, when there were two stories, the Tree of Life was not as passive as it appears in Genesis 2 and 3.
He argues that “the two stories have been unskilfully fused into a single narrative by an editor, who has preserved the one nearly intact, while he has clipped and pared the other almost past recognition.”65
61 Ibid. 19. 62 Ibid. 19. 63 Ibid. 21. 64 Ibid. 24. 65 James George Frazer. Folklore in the Old Testament: Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend and Law (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2003) 16. 31
Adam and Eve, Hans Sebald Beham
The 1543 gravure of Adam and Eve66 by Hans Sebald Beham, engraver of the German Northern Renaissance, is not a usual one. The Tree of Knowledge has become the Tree of Death, embodied by death itself in the form of a skeleton.
This skeleton has ingenuously been positioned as the tree, with the body, from head to toes, acting as the tree trunk, and the arms as branches. This manner of depicting the story of Adam and Eve reiterates and emphasizes the command given by God and the consequence of transgressing it, “Of every tree of the garden you are free to eat; but as for the tree of knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat of it; for as soon as you eat, you shall die.”67 This personification of the Tree of Knowledge as Death reflects the prohibition of God, echoing the consequences of its disobedience: “knowledge of good and evil” and mortality.
The history of interpretation of a biblical text begins with the biblical period and with the text itself. This inner exegesis functions without commentaries, but rather with references within the text. With regards to verses
2:16 and 2:17 of Genesis, such references are present throughout the various books of the Hebrew Scriptures, but also in Genesis and in the very story of Adam and Eve. This first instance of interpretation of Gen. 2:16 and 2:17 is in Gen. 3:2-
3, with Eve‟s retelling of God‟s command, “The woman replied to the serpent,
„We may eat of the fruit of the other trees of the garden. It is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said: “You shall not eat of it or
66 ARTstor Digital Library. 9 January 2010.
Hans Sebald Beham, Adam and Eve, 1543
33 touch it, lest you die”‟.”68 This is an interesting example because, even though it closely follows the text to which it refers, it significantly alters it. With Eve‟s misinterpretation of the notion that it is forbidden not only to eat but also to touch the tree, the original “for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die”69 becomes “you shall not eat of it or touch it, lest you die.”70
It also accentuates the very type of knowledge that is gained when eating from this tree. The Targum translation of the Bible into Aramaic is undeniably an important source of interpretation. Targum Onkelos and Targum Neofiti both have translations of Genesis. In Targum Onkelos, Genesis 2:16-17 is translated,
“„Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat. But of the tree, of which those who eat its fruit know (to distinguish) between good and evil, you shall not eat (of it); for on the day you eat of it you shall surely die.‟”71 Targum Neofiti presents a similar translation of these same two verses, “„from all the trees of the garden you may surely eat; from the tree of knowledge, however, from which anyone who eats would know to distinguish between good and evil, you shall not eat of it because on the day that you shall eat you shall surely die.‟”72 In both cases, the
Targum of verses 16 and 17 seems to follow a relatively literal translation. There is, however, the same deviation in both: the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
(in the Hebrew) is translated as the tree of knowing to distinguish between good and evil (in the Targum). The parentheses and the italics in the English translation
68 Ibid. Gen. 3:2-3. 69 Ibid. Gen. 2:17. 70 Ibid. Gen. 3:3. 71 Moses Aberbach and Bernard Grossfeld. Targum Onkelos to Genesis: A Critical Analysis Together with an English Translation of the Text (New York: Ktav Publishing House; Denver: Centre for Judaic Studies, University of Denver: c.1982) 30. 72 Martin McNamara. Targum Neofiti 1, Genesis (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1992) 58. 34 highlight this difference; yet it is not clear why the translators, in both cases, would alter the expression used to describe this tree. Perhaps the expression
“knowledge of good and evil” is unclear, and there was a need to fill a certain incertitude as to what it meant. The Fragment-Targumim likewise emphasize this same version. In the Paris Manuscript 110, Gen. 2:9 is translated “And the tree of knowledge – whoever eat from it distinguished between good and evil.”73 In the
Vatican Manuscript 440, the same verse is rendered with the same change, “And the tree of knowledge, that whoever eats from it distinguishes between good and evil.”74 It may seem a minor detail; however, the characterization of the eating from the tree of knowledge as being an action that permits to distinguish between good and evil is not what is written in the Hebrew text. It is an interpretation of it.
And in fact, it is an interpretation that occurs in the Talmud and the Midrash as well. The issue here is that the translator has imposed this interpretation not in an external text, but rather in Genesis itself, thus excluding the potential emergence of any other interpretation.
Saadiah ben Joseph, the Gaon of Sura‟s 10th century commentary on
Genesis contains an interesting explanation of God‟s prohibition to eat from the
Tree of Knowledge, “one does not prohibit one from anything that one is in need of until one gives him its equivalent.”75 He applies this general conception to the prohibition in Gen. 2:16-17, justifying the reason why God first mentions that
Adam can eat of any tree that is of good appearance and good for food, but then
73 Michael L. Klein. The Fragment-Targums of the Pentateuch: According to their Extant Sources (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1980) 60. 74 Ibid. 90. 75 Saadiah ben Joseph. Rabbi Saadiah Gaon’s Commentary on the Book of Creation. Edited and translated by Michael Linetsky (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, c.2002) 128. 35 states the exception to this rule, which is that he cannot eat from the Tree of
Knowledge. The reason, according to Saadiah, is “so that it does not come to our minds to justify man and think that he was turned to its goodness because he could not find a tree as good in taste as it.”76 The interpretation of Saadiah as to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is that it should not be understood in an allegorical manner but rather literally, “we see that when he eats from it his mind indeed broadens and his understanding improves as it says: „And the eyes of both of them were opened.‟”77 The knowledge that they acquired is “the partial goods and evils like those [which] were lacking in Adam and Eve, none of which was ashamedness of nakedness.”78 Saadiah interprets the consequence of transgressing the prohibition “for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die”79 in a literal manner.
For him, it implies that if Adam eats of the forbidden fruit, the consequence will indeed be death since he will be deserving mortality, “„You shall surely die‟ is
[nothing more than] informing him what he deserves, God may pay him immediately or delay it or may [altogether] forgive him if he repents.”80
In terms of the commandment and the relationship that it has to the knowledge acquired from the forbidden tree, the 12th century interpreter Ibn Ezra writes: “Adam was an intelligent being, for God would not direct commands to one who was unintelligent. He was deficient in the knowledge of good and evil of
76 Ibid. 128. 77 Ibid. 135. 78 Ibid. 154. 79 JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh: The Traditional Hebrew Text and the New JPS Translation, Pocket edition, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003) Gen. 2:17. 80 Saadiah ben Joseph. Rabbi Saadiah Gaon’s Commentary on the Book of Creation. Edited and translated by Michael Linetsky (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, c.2002) 137. 36 only one thing.”81 The Tree of Knowledge therefore provided Adam and Eve not with intelligence but with sexuality, since it had the “power to instil sexual desire.”82 Not only is this literally implied by the text, because it states that they were ashamed by their nakedness and made coverings for themselves, but also by the lexicography, which is in fact a major characteristic of Ibn Ezra‟s work,
“Adam knew (yada) his wife. Yada (knew) is a euphemism for sexual intercourse.
Sexual intercourse is called „knowledge‟ because sexual desire came from the tree of knowledge.”83
Seforno, in his own interpretation from the 15th and 16th centuries, likewise focuses on the aspect of knowledge and describes the Tree of Knowledge as a tree “whose fruit results in those who eat from it gaining greater understanding of the relationship of good and evil.”84
The 19th century Malbim, in his commentary on Genesis, makes a distinction between absolute good and bad on one hand, and relative good and bad on the other, “When a man is humble and seeks to be just and compassionate and
God fearing – that is absolute evil […] In contrast, the „good‟ and the „bad‟ of our narrative here, pertains to good and evil that are relative […] it is not good or bad in an absolute sense, but in relation to other things.”85 Thus, according to the
Malbim, when Adam ate of the Tree of Knowledge, “the tree had the capacity to
81 Abraham ben Meïr Ibn Ezra. Ibn Ezra’s Commentary on the Pentateuch. Translated and annotated by H. Norman Strickman & Arthur M. Silver (New York, N.Y.: Menorah Pub. Co., c.1988) 58. 82 Ibid. 68. 83 Ibid. 68. 84 Hachut Hameshulash: Commentaries on the Torah by Rabbeinu Chananel, Rabbi Sh’muel ben Meir (Rash’bam), Rabbi David Kimchi (R’dak), Rabbi Ovadiah Seforno. Translated and annotated by Eliyahu Munk (New York; Jerusalem: Lambda Publishers, 2003) 89. 85 Samson Raphael Hirsch. The Pentateuch. Translated by Isaac Levy (London: Isaac Levy, 1959) 62. 37 stir the passions of the body – and by stimulating images of envy and lust and grandeur induce in the soul knowledge of the relative good and bad.”86 In this manner, the Tree of Knowledge “led Adam to experience new emotions that are simultaneously good and bad - good in terms of the body and bad in terms of the soul.”87 The expression “from it” which appears twice in verses Gen. 2:16-17 has been discussed by many medieval commentators, who, unlike the ancient Bible interpreters, have a profound interest in grammar. The Malbim says that “this phrasing of the warning was deliberate in order to test Adam. A test that he failed when he took the second „from‟ to mean that he is not permitted to eat only „from it‟ – only when the fruit is still attached to the tree.”88
In the 20th century, Buber, Cassuto and Hertz also speak of the knowledge received from the Tree of Knowledge. Martin Buber terms the knowledge acquired by the eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil as a knowledge of oppositeness, “human „recognition‟ of opposites alone brings with it the fact of their relatedness to good and evil.”89 Umberto Cassuto has a scholarly approach in dealing with the story of Adam and Eve. He says that almost all commentators have agreed that the story of the Tree of Knowledge of
Good and Evil is an allegory, but that the significance of this allegory is interpreted differently by them all.90 He proposes to attempt to elucidate the true
86 Meir Loeb ben Jehiel Michael. Malbim: Rabbenu Meir Leibush ben Yechiel Michel: Commentary on the Torah. Translated with notes and scientific explanations by Zvi Faier (Jerusalem: Hillel Press, c.1978) 216. 87 Ibid. 217. 88 Ibid. 226. 89 Martin Buber. On the Bible: Eighteen Studies. Edited by Nahum N. Glatzer; introduction by Harold Bloom (New York: Schocken Books, 1982, c.1968) 19. 90 Umberto Cassuto. A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, Translated from the Hebrew by Israel Abrahams (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University 1961-64) 111. 38 meaning of this allegory and “set aside preconceived ideas and endeavour to arrive at the meaning by examining the words of the text themselves, and comparing them with other biblical passages.”91 As a man of his time, he does understand the interest one may have in comparing the story of Adam with other textual traditions of the time, the Akkadian, Ugaritic, Sumerian etc.; however, he understands that “so far as the subject-matter is concerned, we can receive no aid from parallels, because as far as is known today, there is no analogue to this tree to be found either among the Israelites or among the neighbouring peoples.”92 In terms of the knowledge gained from the forbidden tree, Cassuto says that what they truly acquire after eating from it is objective awareness, “and they knew that they were naked […] there is no suggestion here of discernment, judgment or choice between good and evil, but of the objective awareness of all things, both good and bad.”93 He also speaks of the relationship between Adam and God as that between a son and his father, “out of fatherly love the Lord God forbade him to eat of the fruit, which would have opened before him the gateway of the knowledge of the world, the source of care and pain, and would have brought both his simplicity and his bliss to an end.”94 Adam disobeys, like a child, “he did not wish to remain in the position of the child who is under the supervision of his father and is constantly dependent on him; he wanted to learn himself of the world around him, and to act independently on the basis of this knowledge.”95 Joseph
Hertz, in his 20th century commentary on Genesis, labels the knowledge gained
91 Ibid. 112. 92 Ibid. 112. 93 Ibid. 112. 94 Ibid. 113. 95 Ibid. 113. 39 from the forbidden tree as the “knowledge which infancy lacks and experience acquires.”96 He then goes on to describe the command of God in relation to free will, “Man‟s most sacred privilege is freedom of will, the ability to disobey his
Maker.”97 Like the Malbim, Hertz also sees this command as a test, “this sharp limitation of self-gratification, this „dietary law‟, was to test the use he would make of his freedom; and it thus begins the mortal discipline of man.”98
In his 1960 work, The Religion of Israel, Yehezkel Kaufmann speaks about the Tree of Knowledge and argues that Adam had a certain knowledge before eating from the tree, “the Genesis legend itself portrays Adam as having knowledge […] God‟s threat and Adam‟s fear of it presupposes the capacity of distinguishing right from wrong […] From the beginning then, man had knowledge of the good and desired it.”99 According to Kaufmann, man nevertheless does not have the knowledge of evil prior to his sin, “evil is still veiled from him, because he has never tasted it […] The tree is conceived, then, not as the source of knowledge in general, but of the knowledge of, and desire from, evil without which man‟s comprehension is incomplete.”100 This is interesting. The consequence of death given by God if Adam and Eve do not listen to him creates a sense of fear in the story. It is this punishment of death that creates tension; without this punishment, God‟s command would not be as scary and the story would not be so dramatic.
96 J.H. Hertz. The Pentateuch and Haftorahs: Hebrew Text, English translation and Commentary. 2nd ed. (London: Soncino Press, c.1960, t.p. 1981) 8. 97 Ibid. 8. 98 Ibid. 8. 99 Yehezkel Kaufmann. The Religion of Israel, From its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile. Translated and abridged by Moshe Greenberg (London: Allen, 1961) 293. 100 Ibid. 293. 40
The personification of the Tree of Knowledge as Death, as the character of death, in this painting of Hans Sebald Beham, forces this dramatic aspect even more, since the tree now fully embodies God‟s punishment, both textually and visually. When the Tree of Knowledge is represented as a tree, it loses this connection to death and its implication, because it does not appear as such. In fact, the representation of the Tree of Knowledge as death alludes even more to its uniqueness, which is generally difficult to illustrate and thus often requires to be portrayed abstractly or a metaphorically.
The 1487 gravure “Adam and Eve” in Bocacce‟s De Claris Mulieribus101 likewise presents the story of Adam and Eve in an intersting manner, portraying the Tree of Knowledge with the representation of the seven deadly sins in its branches, “Le serpent à tête de femme s‟enroule autour du tronc de l‟arbre dont les frondaisons abritent des petits personages qui illustrent les sept péchés capitaux.”102 This is a direct allusion to the knowledge gained from this tree; a knowledge, which is evil and sinful.
101 Roger Van Schoute. Jérome Bosch (Tournai: Renaissance du Livre, 2003) 147 [Appendix 8]. 102 “The woman-headed serpent wraps around the tree trunk, whose foliage shelters small characters that illustrate the seven capital sins.” Ibid. 147. 41
CHAPTER III: The Presence of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge
Seeing that we have finally reached the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life, we may now focus on the forbidden fruit itself. Even though it cannot concretely be associated with any particular fruit, it is important to note that it has nevertheless been distinguised from all other plants of the Garden of Eden, “Of every tree of the garden you are free to it; but as for the tree of knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat of it.”103 The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is thus the first fruit in the Bible to be excluded (and in a sense discriminated) from the others and therefore to have a significance of its own. Paradoxically, this anonymous fruit thus acquires an intriguing symbolic identity, which has entirely overshadowed its inexistent physical identity.
as ירפ The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon defines
when combined to other ירפ n.m. fruit”104 and specifies the use of the word“
fruit of a) האובת ירפ fruit-tree) and) ירפ ץע ,(fruit of the ground) המדאה ירפ :words
and 105ןגה ךותב רשא ץעה ירפמו crop). Genesis clearly speaks of the fruit of the tree therefore, from a grammatical perspective, the tree in question obviously appears to be a fruit-bearing tree. Of course, when distancing ourselves from the grammar of the text, we can easily suppose that the forbidden fruit was a flower, a crop, or a vegetable, since the Bible often functions in parables. The “fruit of the tree of
103 JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh: The Traditional Hebrew Text and the New JPS Translation, Pocket edition, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003) Gen. 2:16-17. 104 Brown, Francis with the cooperation of S.R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs. The Brown-Driver- Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, Based on the lexicon of William Gesenius, as translated by Edward Robinson, and edited with constant reference to the thesaurus of Gesenius as completed by E. Rödiger, and with authorized use of the German editions of Gesenius‟ Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1996) 826. 105 JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh: The Traditional Hebrew Text and the New JPS Translation, Pocket edition, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003) Gen. 3:3. 42 knowledge of good and evil” may merely be a metaphor or a substitution for any
was nevertheless meant to be understood literally, the ”ץע ירפמ“ type of plant. If forbidden fruit must have been any one of the fruit-trees that existed at this time and in this location, such as the vine, the olive, the fig, the date palm, or the pomegranate.
“Adam and Eve with the Serpent,” Illustration from the Raphael Bible
The eighteenth century “Adam and Eve with the Serpent”106 illustration from the Italian School's Raphael Bible depicts the forbidden fruit as a fig and the forbidden tree (that is, the Tree of Knowledge) as a fig tree. The interpretation of this fruit as being a fig is the most common interpretation that we find in biblical interpretation, it is however very rare in art.
A strange addition to the Genesis story is the notion, in “The Life of Adam and Eve,” that the leaves of all the trees of Eve‟s part of the garden (except the fig tree) fell as soon as she ate the forbidden fruit. This addition seems to complement
Gen. 3:7, “Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they perceived that they were naked; and they sewed together fig leaves and made themselves loincloths”107 by explaining the reason why Adam and Eve chose fig leaves to cover themselves. This account of falling leaves is also responsible for identifying the forbidden fruit as a fig, and of thus resolving one of the main mysteries that this story contains. Interestingly, however, this account only occurs in Eve‟s tale and therefore does not appear in the “Latin Life of Adam and Eve.” As she
106 ARTstor Digital Library. 9 January 2010.
Italian School, “Adam and Eve with the Serpent,” illustration from the Raphael Bible, 18th century
44 recounts the moment when she becomes aware of her nakedness after eating the fruit, Eve says that she turns around, looking for a leaf to cover herself, but all the leaves of her part of the garden fell off at the moment of her transgression and only the fig tree still has leaves. She takes its leaf and states that it is from this tree‟s fruit that she ate. This is an interesting episode. The fall of the trees‟ leaves can be seen as a dramatic reaction, on behalf of the trees, to the sin that she commits, but it also serves to show that the fig tree is different from the other trees of the garden since its leaves remain. There is a certain theatricality to this scene. The revealing of the fig tree as Tree of Knowledge by means of falling leaves resembles a theatre scene in which a character is revealed through the taking off of a mask or the change of a costume. Nevertheless, the identification of the forbidden fruit as a fig is of no novelty. Rather, it is a very common interpretation. In fact, in the tractate b. Sanhedrin, R. Nehemiah states that the tree from which Adam ate “was the fig tree, for whereby they transgressed, they were taught to make amends, as it is written, „And they sewed fig leaves together.‟”108
Likewise, the idea that it had to be the fig because all the other trees refused to give its leaves to Adam and Eve, is also present in Sanhedrin. R.Yose supports the view that it was the fig since it is with the fig that Adam and Eve “misbehaved” and so it is to them that it later opened the door by giving its leaves as coverings.109
108 The Babylonian Talmud, Translated into English with notes, glossary, and indices under the editorship of I. Epstein (London: Soncino Press, 1948-52) Sanhedrin 70b. 109 Jacob Neusner. Genesis Rabbah: the Judaic Commentary to the Book of Genesis: A New American Translation (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, c.1985) 167. 45
The nature of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is discussed in Sanhedrin.
Several fruits are discussed and among them is the fig, proposed by R.Nehemiah, who states that it was the fig, “It was the fig tree, for whereby they transgressed, they were taught to make amends, as it is written, „And they sewed fig leaves together.‟”110 A passage in Genesis Rabbah, continues and examines the discussion begun in the Babylonian Talmud regarding the identity of the tree of knowledge.111 R. Yose supports the view that it was the fig and “derives the meaning of what is not stated from the meaning of what is made explicit.”112 He does so by using one of the main hermeneutical rules, argument by analogy, and compares the story of Adam and Eve with the story of a prince who misbehaved with one of his slave-girls and it was she who later opened the door to him, in the same manner as the fig-tree, from which Adam and Eve ate, later opened the door to them by giving them its leaves as coverings. The fig is not the only version, however. Vine, wheat and even the etrog (citron) are also present in biblical interpretation. They are, nevertheless, not present in art.
“III Baruch” presents a discussion between Baruch and an angel. Unlike the majority of biblical interpretations of Genesis, in “III Baruch” the subject of the discussion is the nature of the forbidden tree. And in fact, this discussion acts as a precursor to the previously cited discussion of the Rabbis in Sanhedrin, on the same issue. Baruch asks the angel to show him the tree from which Adam ate. The response of the angel explains that every angel planted his own type of tree
110 The Babylonian Talmud, Translated into English with notes, glossary, and indices under the editorship of I. Epstein (London: Soncino Press, 1948-52) Sanhedrin 70b. 111 Jacob Neusner. Genesis Rabbah: the Judaic Commentary to the Book of Genesis: A New American Translation (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, c.1985) 167. 112 Ibid. 167. 46
“When God made the garden and commanded Michael to gather two hundred thousand and three angels so that they could plant the garden, Michael planted the olive and Gabriel, the apple; Uriel, the nut; Raphael, the melon; and Satanael, the vine.”113 The forbidden tree, the angel then says, was the vine planted by Satanael,
“God has cursed the vine because Satanael had planted it, and by that he deceived the protoplast Adam and Eve.”114
The rabbinic discussion in Sanhedrin begins with the statement that the
Tree of Knowledge was the vine. This identification corresponds with that of “III
Baruch,” where Satanael is said to have planted the vine and that its fruit made
Adam transgress. The rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud nevertheless do not all agree with this statement and present two other possible identifications of the forbidden fruit. The first statement regarding the vine is supported by R.Ukba and
R.Meir, “That [forbidden] tree from which Adam ate was the vine for nothing else but wine brings woe to man.”115 R. Judah rejects this statement and argues that it was the wheat, “It was the wheat plant, for an infant cannot say „father‟ and
„mother‟ until it has tasted of wheat.”116 In Genesis Rabbah where, as we have seen with the fig, this discussion continues, the vine and the wheat reappear and are also accompanied by the etrog. R. Samuel questions the version of the wheat,
“Is it possible that it was the wheat? […] what is written is „tree‟ [so how can it be
113 James H. Charlesworth. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Volume 1. 1st ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983-85) [Slavonic Apocalypse of Baruch 4:7] 666. 114 Ibid. 666. 115 The Babylonian Talmud, Translated into English with notes, glossary, and indices under the editorship of I. Epstein (London: Soncino Press, 1948-52) Sanhedrin 70a-b. 116 Ibid. Sanhedrin 70b. 47 wheat!].”117 R. Zeira answers that it is indeed possible since “it was wheat that grew as high as cedars of Lebanon [and so fell into the classification of trees].”118
The version of the vine is further discussed by R. Judah Ilai who says that Adam and Eve ate grapes by quoting Deut. 32:32 where it is written that the grapes have clusters of bitterness.119 R. Abba of Acre proposes a different version, that of the etrog (citron), “It was the etrog, in line with this verse; „And the woman saw that the [wood of] the tree was good for food‟ (Gen. 3:6). Now go an find out what sort of tree produces wood that can be eaten just as much as its fruit can be eaten, and you will find only the etrog.”120
Eve and the Apple with Counterpart, Giuseppe Arcimboldo
Italian Renaissance painter Arcimboldo‟s 1578 depiction of Adam and
Eve in his diptych Eve and the Apple with Counterpart121 presents the two characters in his signature composite style, with their heads being composed of human beings. As the title of the work implies, Eve is holding an apple, but we have seen above that the apple is not present among those fruits that grew in biblical lands during the biblical period. Likewise, the biblical interpretations of
Sanhedrin or the Genesis Rabbah, as well as other earlier interpretations do not mention the apple as a possible candidate for the forbidden fruit. However, although the fig appears most often in biblical interpretation, and quite rarely in art, the apple appears very rarely (almost never) in interpretation, and almost
117 Jacob Neusner. Genesis Rabbah: the Judaic Commentary to the Book of Genesis: A New American Translation (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, c.1985) 166. 118 Ibid. 166. 119 Ibid. 167. 120 Ibid. 167. 121 Werner Kriegeskorte. Arcimboldo (Koln: Taschen, 2004) 66-67. 48
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Eve and the Apple with Counterpart, 1578
49 always in art. There are however, surprisingly, certain instances of Biblical interpretation that do mention the apple.
Among the Ashkenazi Bible interpretation of the 13th century, we find the
Nizzahon Vetus, a polemical encyclopaedia containing anti-Christian arguments.
In it, are several interesting passages that refer to the Tree of Knowledge. One of these is in a chapter on the Critique of the Gospels and Christianity, and it speaks of the injustice of the Christian concept of the original sin. The author of this text questions the heretic (Christian), “how can it even enter your mind that God behaved so cruelly toward Adam, catching him as a result of a minor accusation – the biting of a single apple – and removing him from both this world and the world to come?”122 Two important observations can be made here. The first is that the Jewish author of this work addresses and criticises the concept of the original sin. In the interpretations discussed above, Jewish writers usually tend to ignore the Christian understanding of original sin; here, however, they are fully aware of it and they attack it vigorously. The second is the notion that the forbidden fruit is presented here as an apple. This is very unusual, in fact, the first time it has been encountered in this chronological survey of interpretations. Sanhedrin is perhaps the only source so far that has really addressed the question of the nature of the forbidden tree, and has proposed several different versions: the fig tree, the vine, the wheat, and the etrog, but this is the first mention of the apple.
The literature of the Marranos also contains a reference to the apple as being the forbidden fruit. In his “Dialogue of Adam and Eve,” the 17th century
122 The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: a Critical Edition of the Nizzahon Vetus. Introduction, translation, and commentary by David Berger. 1st Jason Aronson Inc. ed. (Northvale, N.J.: J. Aronson, 1996) 218. 50 poet Enriquez Gomez writes from the perspective of both protagonists: first, from
Adam‟s perspective and then from Eve‟s. In a sense, this is similar to the “Life of
Adam and Eve” Pseudepigrapha, where a voice is also given to both Adam and
Eve, “This tree is the tree of Life / and its quality of grace / imparts to the human soul a dish / of intellectual delight. / Let us put forth our lips to take / full in its moral sustenance / but not to touch that which means death, / that is crowned with mother-of-pearl.”123 What is interesting about this poetry is the fact that the forbidden tree is the Tree of Life rather than the Tree of Knowledge, and more importantly, the very detailed description of the forbidden fruit, which is surprisingly identified as being an apple, “Although it appears fair to you, / this apple of a pallid hue, / it contains a worm within it / which toils to make a grave for you. / If we do not ever touch / its skin which shines aglow with rouge / we shall live on eternally / in this forest hallowed of God.”124 This identification is unusual, and up until now, it has only appeared once, in the 13th century Nizzahon
Vetus. Here, however, the description of the fruit itself is more specific: it is said to have “skin which shines aglow with rouge.” Interestingly, such a description closely corresponds to visual representations of the story of Adam and Eve where the forbidden fruit is often depicted as a red apple.
Latin may be responsible for the identification of this fruit as an apple. In
Latin, the word malum means both apple and evil, and seeing that the forbidden fruit grew on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and that by eating from
123 Marrano Poets of the Seventeenth Century: an Anthology of the Poetry of João Pinto Delgado, Antonio Enríquez Gómez, and Miguel de Barrios. Edited and translated by Timothy Oelman (Oxford; Portland, OR: Littman Library, 2007) 151. 124 Ibid. 151. 51 this tree, Adam and Eve brought sin and evil into the world, it makes sense that both words may have been purposefully confounded, “The forbidden fruit par excellence in Christian iconography is the apple, though this choice is based on a dubious linguistic connection: in Latin, malum means „apple‟, „fruit‟ and
„evil‟.”125 According to Giorgi, during the Middle Ages, “this triple meaning led artists who illustrated the act of original sin to standardize the visual representation of the fruit, which finally became the apple. Because the Bible does not mention a specific kind of fruit, artists had some latitude and they generally chose the fruit most common in their region”126 In his article on Van Eyck‟s
Ghent Altarpiece, James Snyder discusses the apple in representations of Adam and Eve:
Naturally one would assume that the forbidden fruit here is the traditional
apple, just as it appears in the vast majority of Medieval and Renaissance
representations of the Fall. The identification of the forbidden fruit as an
apple follows a fairly consistent pattern in the Latin West, although its
etymological backgrounds are complex. The Jews, for instance, identified
the Tree of Knowledge as an olive, a grape vine, or even sheaves of wheat,
since apples apparently were not known in the Near East in biblical times.
Greek commentators on Genesis generally identified it with the fig tree,
and it sometimes appears that way in Christian representations. Latin
authorities, on the hands, early identified the fruit of the tree as an apple.
In mythology the „Apples of Hesperides‟, the garden considered to be the
125 Rosa Giorgi. Angels and Demons in Art. Edited by Stefano Zuffi and Translated by Rosanna M. Giammanco Frongia (Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Trust Publications, 2003) 103. 126Ibid. 103. 52
pagan counterpart of the Earthly Paradise of Eden, provided the answer.
The early Latin term Pomum, however, did not specifically refer to „apple‟
in the modern sense, but to various kinds of fruit produced on trees. The
etymology of the „apple‟ as the forbidden fruit for Christian commentators
was more securely traced to the Latin Malus (referred to by Vergil as an
apple tree), and in the Vulgate text of the Song of Songs it was thus
identified: „Under the apple tree (sub arbore malo) I raised thee up: there
thy mother was corrupted, there she was deflowered that bore thee‟ (8:5).
Since sub arbore malo was read as either „under the apple tree‟ or „under
the evil tree‟ the association with Eve and the forbidden fruit was a most
fitting one127
It is not clear where and when the apple has entered the realm of the biblical book of Genesis and since when it has become the forbidden fruit par excellence. With some paintings, such as Arcimboldo‟s Eve and the Apple with
Counterpart or the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicles’ “Adam and Eve, Eating the
Apple and Being Expelled from Paradise,”128 the fact that the fruit is an apple is obvious from the title of the work, seeing that the title is descriptive. The notion that the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was often misinterpreted as being an apple since the apple was perceived as a generic fruit, or as a common fruit in the region where it was presented is plausible. In fact, this same form of misrepresentation and perception of the fruit as an apple also seems to exist in Greek mythology,
127 James Snyder. “Jan Van Eyck and Adam‟s Apple” in The Art Bulletin, College Art Association (Vol. 58, No. 4; Dec. 1976) 511-512. 128 Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps. 9 January 2010.
An interesting example of Adam and Eve paintings, all of which present the apple as the forbidden fruit, are the paintings130 of German Renaissance artist
Lucas Cranach the Elder. These paintings exist in many different versions and
“The Courtauld Institute picture of the Fall of Man occupies a special position among the 50 versions Cranach painted of this subject.”131 Each presents the same scene of the same story. Other paintings where the forbidden fruit is the apple include Albrecht Dürer‟s 1507 Adam and Eve,132 Charles Joseph Natoire‟s The
Expulsion from Paradise, Hans Baldung Grien‟s 1524 Adam and Eve,133 Hendrik
Goltzius‟ 1616 The Fall of Man,134 Hugo Van der Goes‟ fifteenth century
Original Sin,135 Jacopo Tintoretto‟s sixteenth century Adam and Eve136 and the
129 “It is hard to exactly affirm what type of fruit were the apple of the Hesperides. The greek word employed to name them, melon, signifies „round fruit‟ or „fruit‟ of the tree in general” Lucia Impelluso. Jardins, Potagers et Labyrinthes (Paris: Éditions Hazan, 2007) 347. 130 Christiane Stukenbrock and Barbara Töpper. 1000 Chefs-d’Oeuvre de la Peinture Européenne (Koln: Könemann, 2005) 244 [Appendix 10a]; Cranach. Edited by Bodo Brinkman. English ed. (London: Royal Academy of Arts; New York: Distributed in the United States and Canada by Harry N. Abrams, c.2007) 361 [Appendix 10b] and 367 [Appendix 10c]. 131 Cranach. Edited by Bodo Brinkman. English ed. (London: Royal Academy of Arts; New York: Distributed in the United States and Canada by Harry N. Abrams, c2007) 366. 132 Stefano Zuffi. The Renaissance: 1401-1610: The Splendor of European Art (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2003) 224 [Appendix 11]. 133 Web Gallery of Art. 9 January 2010.
Codex Series nova 2612.137
“Temptation in Eden,” Hunterian Psalter
The depiction of the forbidden fruit and of the Tree of Knowledge in the
Hunterian Psalter,138 a twelfth century English Romanesque illuminated manuscript, is original. The red coloured fruits that grow on the tree resemble no other fruit and at the same time may resemble many different fruits. It nevertheless does not seem to be the intention of the artist to clarify the fruit‟s identity. This is similar to Ibn Ezra‟s approach, who maintained that the Tree of
Knowledge and the Tree of Life were unique trees, not to be found anywhere else but in the Garden of Eden, “God made the trees grow from the ground throughout the world and he did the same in the Garden of Eden, but there he placed two trees not anywhere else in the world.”139 The description of the Tree of
Knowledge in pseudepigraphal book 1 Enoch is somewhat close to this approach,
“And the tree of wisdom, of which one eats and knows great wisdom, (was among them). It looked like the colours of the carob tree, its fruit like very beautiful
137 Stephan Fussel and Christian Gastgeber. The Most Beautiful Bibles. Edited by Andreas Fingernagel (Koln: Taschen (Taschen's 25th Anniversary Edition), 2008) 231 [Appendix 16]. 138 University of Glasgow: Special Collections. The Hunterian Psalter: A Selection of Images from Glasgow University Library MS Hunter 229. 9 January 2010.
“Temptation in Eden,” detail from the Hunterian Psalter. c.1170
56 grape clusters, and the fragrance of this tree travels and reaches afar.”140 The same occurs with the Gnostic work “On the Origin of the World,” which has an unusual description of the Tree of Knowledge, “the tree of knowledge, possessing the power of god. Its glory is like the moon shining forth brilliantly. And its branches are beautiful. Its leaves are fig leaves. Its fruit is like the good, magnificent dates.”141 Both descriptions imply that the Tree of Knowledge is a mixed tree, with fig leaves and fruits that are like dates by the former and with carob leaves and fruits that are like grapes by the latter. Previous interpretations on the nature of the tree attempted to fit the tree into an existing plant; the Gnostic approach as well as the approach taken in the pseudepigraphal Book of Enoch, nevertheless reject this and rather define it as a tree that is unreal, and that is essentially paradisiacal.
This approach of defining the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and its fruit a being unique and exceptional is interesting. Jan Van Eyck‟s representation of Adam and Eve in the 1432 Ghent Altarpiece142 is particularly relevant to this discussion. The story of Adam and Eve appears at both extremities of the altarpiece, with Adam at the far left and Eve at the far right. Eve is holding the forbidden fruit in her hand, and even though this fruit is visible to the viewer, its identity is not clear. James Snyder concludes that the fruit is unique in representations of the Fall of Adam and Eve. He identifies it as a no longer
140 James H. Charlesworth. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Volume 1. 1st ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983-85) [1 Enoch 32:3-4] 28. 141 Nag Hammadi Library in English, Translated by Members of the Coptic Gnostic Library Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity (San Francisco: Harper and Row, c.1977) 169. 142 Christiane Stukenbrock and Barbara Töpper. 1000 Chefs-d’Oeuvre de la Peinture Européenne (Koln: Könemann, 2005) 313 [Appendix 17]. 57 familiar species of citrus fruit, the so-called „Adam‟s apple‟, and says that it was well-known in the fifteenth century, “Jan undoubtedly discovered it on his travels, for this exotic variety of apple grows in Spain, Portugal and Italy and was long associated with the fruit given by Eve to Adam.”143 Snyder describes the forbidden fruit in Van Eyck‟s painting as a small fruit with a rough and bumby thick skin, yellow in colour with shades of green and reddish-brown.144 It is not clear whether this fruit really is this citrus fruit or not; the fruit depicted by Van
Eyck is nevertheless not a usual one and perhaps an imagined one. It seems as though Van Eyck is purposefully representing a fruit that is not generic (like the apple). What is interesting, however, is that he succeeds in nevertheless representing a fruit. The viewer knows that what Eve is holding in her hand is indeed a fruit, since it does share the characteristics of certain fruits, but we do not know which fruit. In this sense, Van Eyck has succeeded to win the combat between abstraction and concretization and has indeed represented this abstract fruit in a concrete manner.
The observations of Yaakov Culi on the story of Adam and Eve and on
Eve giving the fruit to Adam are interesting with regards to this matter. The identity of the fruit is not addressed by Culi, but he does refer to the manner in which Eve gave the fruit to Adam. On one hand, he says, she may have coerced him into eating from it, “when she saw that she could not get Adam actually to eat from the fruit as it was plucked from the tree, she squeezed it and gave him some
143 F. Ann Birks. Floral Symbolism in the Works of Jan van Eyck, Particularly in the Ghent Altarpiece (Montreal: McGill Thesis, 1978) 65. 144 James Snyder. “Jan Van Eyck and Adam‟s Apple” in The Art Bulletin, College Art Association (Vol. 58, No. 4 Dec. 1976) 513. 58 of its juice. Adam thus partook of the fruit without being aware of what he was actually doing.”145 On the other hand, he states that perhaps he himself took it from her, “Some say that Adam actually took the fruit from Eve.”146 Although the manner in which the fruit is being given or taken off from the tree, the fact that it can be plucked from the tree, squeezed (by hand) and that its juice can be drunk does not indicate its identity, it does however give an approximate indication of its texture, shape and dimensions.
145 Yaakov Culi. The Torah Anthology: MeAm Lo’ez. Translated by Aryeh Kaplan. 1st ed. (New York: Moznaim Pub. Co., c.1978) 262. 146 Ibid. 262. 59
CHAPTER IV: The Absence of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge
As we have seen, the presence of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge in paintings of Adam and Eve and in Bible commentaries suggests various interpretations of the forbidden fruit. Some interpretations are parallel, others contradictory. What arises curiosity, however, is that sometimes there simply is no need to interpret and certain artists deliberately chose not to represent the forbidden fruit. The fruit, as well as its identity, is therefore absent from these works. This interpretation does not occur very often; however, it is present among artists and biblical interpreters alike. In Genesis Rabbah, the discussion of the rabbis on the identity of the fruit is concluded with a statement by R. Azariah, R.
Judah bar Simon in the name of R. Joshua b. Levi “In point of fact, the Holy One blessed be he did not reveal the name of that particular tree to man, and it is not destined to be revealed.”147
Adam and Eve, Domenichino
Italian Baroque painter Domenichino‟s seventeenth century Adam and
Eve148 is a very good example of the absence of the forbidden fruit. The Tree of
Knowledge of good and evil, if it is in fact the tree that we see behind Adam and
Eve, has no fruit on it. The leaves on this tree do not permit one to see any fruits, which are perhaps behind the leaves, but the artist obviously does not want them to be visible. All three characters – Adam, Eve and God – have very expressive gestures as they play out the scene of the Garden of Eden, but the fruit is not
147 Jacob Neusner. Genesis Rabbah: the Judaic Commentary to the Book of Genesis: A New American Translation (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, c.1985) 168. 148 ARTstor Digital Library. 9 January 2010.
Domenichino, Adam and Eve, 1623-1625
61 present, even though the body-language of the characters give the impression that the forbidden fruit is present in the scene in the form of a “sous-entendu.” The same sort of implication can be seen in some of the landscape paintings that were discussed above, with regards to the representation of the Garden of Eden, such as
Thomas Cole‟s The Garden of Eden and Jan Brueghel the Elder‟s Garden of
Eden.
The identity of the Tree of Knowledge is discussed by Culi, who adopts a view that has already appeared in Sanhedrin and in Maimonides‟ Guide of the
Perplexed, the view that the identity of the Tree of Knowledge has purposefully not been revealed, “this teaches the lesson that a person should not shame his neighbour by mentioning a sin that he committed. If we knew to which species the
Tree of Knowledge belonged, whenever we saw such a tree, we would say, „this is what brought death to the world.‟”149
“Fall and Expulsion of Adam and Eve,” Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo
Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo‟s 1510 “Fall and Expulsion of
Adam and Eve”150 in the Sistine Chapel is also an example of the absence of the fruit. There is however a clear indication of what this fruit is in this painting, because the leaves of the tree give away its identity of the tree itself as a fig tree.
A closer look at the image reveals that the fruit itself – the fig – also is present in the work, but it is not obvious. Since they are the same colour, there is no contrast
149 Yaakov Culi. The Torah Anthology: MeAm Lo’ez. Translated by Aryeh Kaplan. 1st ed. (New York: Moznaim Pub. Co., c.1978) 254. 150 Christiane Stukenbrock and Barbara Töpper. 1000 Chefs-d’Oeuvre de la Peinture Européenne (Koln: Könemann, 2005) 636. 62
Michelangelo, “Fall and Expulsion of Adam,” from the Sistine Chapel, 1510
63 between the fig leaves and the figs themselves Seen from down below, when the viewer was looking at the high ceiling of the Sistine chapel, these green fruits would have been camouflaged by the luscious green leaves of the tree. The same occurs with the 1481 Florence Miniature “Temptation of Adam and Eve”151 or the
994 Codex Aemilianensis “Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,”152 where, based on the leaves, the tree from which the characters eat may also indirectly appear as a fig tree. The fruit is therefore not explicitly present in such works. As we have seen, this interpretation of the Tree of Knowledge as being a fig tree is supported by various interpreters, but many counter-arguments seek to eliminate any sort of identification.
With regards to the nature of the tree, Rashi refers to both Sanhedrin, where the Talmud said that the tree was a fig, and to Midrash Tanchuma, where it is said that God purposefully has not identified the tree in the story. Rashi adds no interpretation of his own to this particular biblical passage. In some instances he seems to repeat the obvious, and in others he quotes known interpretations from different sources.
Ibn Ezra also refers to the popular argument that it was a fig because
Adam and Eve sewed fig-leaves together after eating of it; however, he did not agree with this explanation. Rather, he says that “if this interpretation were correct, the Bible would say, „And they sewed leaves of the tree of
151 Scala Archives. 9 January 2010.
Life and on the Tree of Knowledge, saying that, “the two trees in the midst of the garden were unique species not found anywhere else on the face of the earth.”154
Likewise, Maimonides simply says that its identity has never been revealed, “the Holy One, blessed be He, has never revealed that tree to man and will never reveal it.”155 This does not necessarily mean that it does not exist or that it is unique, but rather that its identity must remain hidden.
153 Abraham ben Meïr Ibn Ezra. Ibn Ezra’s Commentary on the Pentateuch. Translated and annotated by H. Norman Strickman & Arthur M. Silver (New York, N.Y.: Menorah Pub. Co., c.1988) 67-68. 154 Ibid. 68. 155 Moses Maimonides. The Guide of the Perplexed. Translated with an introduction and notes by Shlomo Pines, with an introductory essay by Leo Strauss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963) 357. 65
CHAPTER V: Typological References to the Forbidden Fruit in New Testament Scenes
Typology is present with regards to many biblical scenes and serves as an interesting and important point of contact between the Old and New Testaments.
In order to understand the following chapter, it is necessary to be familiar with typology, a theological concept that seeks to demonstrate the relationship between the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. Michelle P. Brown, Manuscript Collections
Curator at the British Library, defines typology as “an interpretive system in
Christian thought wherein people, events, and passages of the Old Testament are seen as prefigurations of New Testament themes. The system is designed to prove that the New Testament is a fulfilment of the Old.”156 Brown mentions several examples of this elaborate system: “the sacrifice of Isaac, for example, foretells the Crucifixion; David is a type of Christ; and the stories of Jonah and the whale and Daniel in the lions‟ den prefigure Christ‟s Passion and Resurrection.”157 The story of Adam and Eve undoubtedly stands among these biblical scenes and possesses its own typological network. Since Jesus is seen as the Second Adam, and the Virgin Mary as the Second Eve, this network is present in many of the most important scenes of the New Testament and of Christian doctrine.
In Christianity, the story of the Fall of Man becomes the story of the
Original Sin, so Christian interpretations of Adam and Eve regularly return to this concept. Likewise, through this notion of Original Sin, Jesus is interpreted as the new Adam, who will re-establish mankind without sin. The New Testament itself
156 Michelle P. Brown. Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms. (Malibu, Calif. : J. Paul Getty Museum in association with the British Library, 1994) 123. 157 Ibid. 123. 66 is a good source of interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, exhibiting the notion that
Jesus will come in order to fix the Original Sin of Adam, “and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.”158 In Romans the same idea is repeated,
“For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.”159
Adam and Eve are recurring characters that appear throughout the life of
Jesus, from his conception at the moment of the Annunciation, to his death, at the moment of the Crucifixion. The Garden of Eden itself is paralleled to the Church.
In fact, in the Epideixis, Irenaeus develops the notion of the typology of the Old
Testament in the New by discussing the command given to Adam by God in relation to the Church, “For the Church has been planted as a garden (paradises) in this world; therefore the Spirit of God says, „You may freely eat from every tree of the garden,‟ that is, you may eat from every scripture of the Lord, but you shall not eat with an uplifted mind, nor touch any heretical discord.”160 The story of Adam and Eve, as well as its contents, is thus interpreted within Christianity by both New Testament writers and early Christian thinkers, as a prototype established for the theology of the New Testament. Adam‟s sin, the Original Sin, is appropriated as one of Christianity‟s central doctrines.
158 The Holy Bible, New International Version (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1978) Heb. 2:17. 159 Ibid. Rom. 5:19. 160 Matthew Craig Steenberg. Irenaeus on Creation: the Cosmic Christ and the Saga of Redemption (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008) 156. 67
“Nativity and The Fall of Man,” Farnese Hours, Giulio Clovio
The 1546 “Nativity and the Fall of Man”161 from the Italian Farnese
Hours by Giulio Clovio presents a good example of this Old Testament - New
Testament typology. A double page presents the birth of Jesus on the left side and the story of Adam and Eve on the right. The New Testament expresses the relation between the two as that of antitype. Adam is the antitype of Christ, his opposite: “In each instance the single act of one man has a consequence that affects the entire human race […] Adam and Christ are related to one another as a photographic negative to its positive print or as a mould to plastic shaped by it.”162
This presentation of Adam and Jesus and of their respective stories in this double- page format thus clearly evokes the notion of photographic negative. Vasari comments on the Farnese Hours and on this aspect of type and antitype, “Don
Giulio has divided this work of his into twenty-six little stories, arranged in pairs, with one facing another, showing type and antitype; and every little story has an ornamental border around it, each one different from the other, with figures and fantasies appropriate to the subject it treats.”163 The typological representation of these two images is explained in Chefs d’Oeuvres de l’Enluminure, where the author says, “Adam et Éve tenant le fruit défendu sont mis en regard de l‟Enfant divin adoré par les bergers et sa mère. Si le mal est entré dans ce monde par le
161Ingo F. Walther and Dr. Norbert Wolf. Chefs d’Oeuvres de l’Enluminure: Les Plus Beaux Manuscrits Enluminés du Monde 400 à 1600 (Koln: Taschen 2005) 432. 162 Leonhard Goppelt. Typos, the Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New, Translated by Donald H. Madvig; foreword by E. Earle Ellis (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, c.1982) 129. 163 The Farnese Hours: the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. Introduction and Commentaries by Webster Smith (New York: G. Braziller, 1976) 33. 68
Giulio Clovio, “Nativity” and “The Fall of Man,” Farnese Hours, 1546
69 serpent du paradis symptomatiquement affablé d‟un visage feminin, Marie, mère de Dieu, a racheté le péché original.”164
Many similar images exist. Sometimes, they concern Adam and Jesus, sometimes, on the other hand, they concern Eve and Mary. The fifteenth century
Master of Catherine of Cleves‟ “Eve and the Virgin”165 is one such situation. Eve is represented on the left side of the tree, most likely the Tree of Knowledge but this is not clear; Mary is represented on the right side of the tree, holding the baby
Jesus in her arms: “The two mothers of mankind, the original Eve and the „New
Eve‟, the Virgin Mary, stand on opposite sides of the Tree of Knowledge. The serpent hands a piece of fruit to the first Eve, who is naked except for the leaf with which she covers herself”166 The contrast between the two is accentuated by the words above them, “The opposition of the two Eves is made explicit by the banderole held above the tree by an angel: „Eve authoress of sin; Mary authoress of merit‟.”167
Berthold Furtmeyr‟s 1481 Missel de Salzburg168 offers a very similar composition, “Mary and Eve clearly embody the dichotomy of Good and Evil, of
Salvation and Mother of All Evil.”169 Mary and Eve are standing alongside the
164 “Adam and Eve holding the forbidden fruit are compared to the divine Child adored by the shepherds and His mother. If evil entered this world through the paradise serpent with a friendly feminine face, Mary, mother of God, redeemed the original sin” Ingo F. Walther and Dr. Norbert Wolf. Chefs d’Oeuvres de l’Enluminure: Les Plus Beaux Manuscrits Enluminés du Monde 400 à 1600 (Koln: Taschen 2005) 433. 165 The Hours of Catherine of Cleves. Introduction and commentaries by John Plummer (New York: George Braziller, 1966) plate 89 [Appendix 20]. 166 Ibid. plate 89. 167 Ibid. plate 89. 168 Ingo F. Walther and Dr. Norbert Wolf. Chefs d’Oeuvres de l’Enluminure: Les Plus Beaux Manuscrits Enluminés du Monde 400 à 1600 (Koln: Taschen 2005) 382 [Appendix 21]. 169 Georges Duby and Nahalie Zemon Davis, Michelle Perrot and Arlette Farge. A History of Women in the West: Renaissance and Enlightenment Paradoxes (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993) 191. 70 tree, Mary on the left and Eve on the right, each taking something from the tree and giving it to those people near it, on each side. Mary is giving the white consecrated hosts for the sacrament of the Eucharist, “The Virgin, on the left, plucks from a place on the tree close to a small crucifix the antidote to mortal sin, the host, which she passes on the cortège of the elect, followed by an angel carrying a scroll bearing the inscription: „Look, this is the bread of angels, the food of pilgrims‟,”170 whereas Eve is giving the forbidden fruit, “Eve, stunningly nude and the cynosure of all eyes, hands the forbidden fruit, plucked from a spot on the tree close to a death‟s head, to a cortège of paupers: „She feeds evil‟.
Accompanying those who eat of the forbidden fruit, a skeleton carries a scroll that reads: „From this tree comes the evil of death and the good of life‟.”171
Interestingly, they are grabbing these fruits/hosts from the same tree. This seems to echo the Christian notion of repentance: Mary is helping the human to repent from the original sin that Eve initially brought to the world, “Two images of death thus frame the universal mother […] The scene is entirely dominated by two female presences, with the negative view appearing to outweigh the positive.”172
170 Ibid. 191. 171 Ibid. 191-193. 172 Ibid. 193. 71
The Temptation in the Desert, La Chaise Dieu Abbey
French La Chaise Dieu Abbey‟s 1844 choir tapestry The Temptation in the
Desert173 is an example of the parallel that exists between Jesus and Adam in terms of temptation. Another important comparison between Jesus (the new
Adam) and Adam is the fact that both were tempted; yet Jesus, unlike Adam, did not yield. The story of the temptation of Jesus by the devil appears in the Gospels and is itself an important reference to the Genesis story of the Fall. The Book of
Hebrews mentions this episode and connects it once again to Jesus as the atoner of sins, “Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”174 In his Typos: the Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New, Goppelt explores the notion of Jesus as the second
Adam in more depth. He argues that this Adam-Christ Typology goes back to the genealogy of Jesus in Luke 2:23-38, “Luke places the story of Jesus‟ temptation immediately after his genealogy so that the words „Adam, the son of God‟ ( ‘Αδαμ
του Θεου) stand between the two pericopes, indicating that he found Adam-Christ typology in both.”175
The “Dialogue with Trypho the Jew” also exhibits the temptation of Jesus as second Adam, “For, since the devil had deceived Adam, he fancied that he could in some way harm Him also.”176 Jesus and Adam have both been tempted;
173 La Chaise Dieu Abbey. The Choir Tapestries: Selected Works. 9 January 2010.
La Chaise Dieu Abbey, The Temptation in the Desert, 1844
73
Adam by Eve and Jesus by the Devil. This tapestry is a very good representation of this parallel. It could be divided in two, the story of Adam and Eve on the left and the story of Jesus‟ temptation by the Devil on the right. The two are nevertheless connected by the very obvious manner of the artist of representing parallels between the characters. He compares Adam with Jesus and Eve with the
Devil through the characters‟ position. Adam strangely resembles Jesus. They are dressed differently, but their heads are very similar. The positions of their arms and hands – the left hand above the right hand, are similar. And it is the same with the position of their feet; both have the right foot in front of the left. Eve and the
Devil can also be compared in this matter. Once again, they are dressed differently, but the position of their hands and feet are very similar, as though
Adam and Eve are being reincarnated in Jesus and the Devil.
The Madonna of the Victory, Andrea Mantegna
The 1496 altarpiece Madonna of the Victory177 by Andrea Mantegna, a
Northern Italian Renaissance painter, is one other example among many that parallels the Hebrew Bible‟s story of Adam and Eve with the Christian Bible‟s story of Jesus. Adam and Eve are represented under the Virgin Mary‟s throne in a scene where she is holding the baby Jesus on her lap, “Traditional Christian iconography in Mantegna‟s painting includes Adam and Eve, shown in fictive
177 Stefano Zuffi. The Renaissance: 1401-1610: The Splendor of European Art (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2003) 117. 74
Andrea Mantegna, The Madonna of the Victory, 1496 75 sculpture on the base of the throne: mankind has sinned, and Christ must come as
Redeemer.”178
Jesus is represented at various moments of his life and very often, Adam and Eve are present in those depictions. Interestingly, however, Adam and Eve are not always present themselves, but sometimes the artist chooses to depict the forbidden fruit instead of them, thus indicating their presence as well as the cause of the original sin. When it is the fruit alone that is presented, it appears as an apple. Once again, we therefore have the interpretation of the apple as being the forbidden fruit, an interpretation that has become a symbol and now, whether it is right or wrong, it is forever attached to the story of Adam and Eve and it forever serves as the symbol of this story.
The annunciation is the first appearance of Jesus, the moment of his conception. Fra Angelico‟s fifteenth century Altarpiece of the Annunciation179 presents the scene of the Annunciation in the foreground, in the centre and on the right, and the scene of the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden on the left in the background, “The elegant columns divide the paintings roughly into three parts and the overlapping of the figures adds movement to the picture.
Further back, on the left, is the Expulsion from Paradise, implying that the Virgin as the second Eve is a promise of redemption.”180 Another depiction of the annunciation, Carlo Crivelli‟s 1486 The Annunciation181 also presents a parallel
178 Joseph Manca. Andrea Mantegna and the Italian Renaissance (New York: Parkstone, 2006) 92. 179 Gabriele Bartz. Masters of Italian Art: Fra Angelico (Konigswinter, H.F.Ullman, 2007) 49 [Appendix 22]. 180 Gabriele Bartz. Masters of Italian Art: Fra Angelico (Konigswinter, H.F.Ullman, 2007) 49. 181 Stefano Zuffi. European Art of the 15th Century. (Los Angeles, CA. J. Paul Getty Trust Publications, 2005) 261 [Appendix 23]. 76 between Adam and Eve and the conception of Jesus; here, however, they are referred to symbolically, through the apple that is lying on the ground.
The birth of Jesus likewise is a moment when Adam and Eve appear in
Christian art. Petrus Christus‟ fifteenth century The Nativity,182 for example, presents Adam and Eve as two small sculpture figurines standing on each side of the scene on two columns that form the arch framing the image, “The arch above the figures of Adam and Eve, whose transgressions led to Christ‟s Incarnation and sacrifice, presents six Genesis scenes, which Charles de Tolnay recognized are representations of sin and punishment.”183 These six scenes: the expulsion of
Adam and Eve from Eden, Adam and Eve at work, Cain and Abel making an offering, Cain slaying Abel, the Lord speaking to Cain, and Cain leaving for the land of Nod are above the two figures of Adam and Eve, which are standing on columns supported by two atlantes, “Bearing the heavy burden of man‟s sin are the two atlantes at the base of the columns supporting Adam and Eve, who, covering themselves, acknowledge their iniquity.”184 This composition surrounding the nativity scene suggests “a kind of cause and effect, the sins of
Adam and Eve illustrated in the arch are absolved through the sacrifice and
Redemption initiated in the Nativity shown below.185
The next scene is that of the Madonna and Child. In some instances, the child Jesus is sitting on the lap of his mother, the enthroned Virgin Mary. These paintings, like Mantegna‟s The Madonna of Victory, or Francesco Marmitta‟s
182 Maryan Wynn Ainsworth. Petrus Christus: Renaissance Master of Bruges. Contributions by Maximiliaan P.J. Martens (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, c.1994) 159 [Appendix 24]. 183 Ibid. 158. 184 Ibid. 158. 185 Ibid. 161. 77 sixteenth century Virgin and Child Flanked by Saints Benedict and Quentin,186 sometimes have Adam and Eve themselves represented somewhere in the painting. Other such works have the presence of the forbidden fruit, that is, of the apple. In Carlo Crivelli‟s 1482 Triptych of Camerino,187 the apple is lying on the ground before the little Jesus. In his fifteenth century Virgin and Child
Enthroned188 and in Lucas Cranach the Elder‟s sixteenth century Virgin and Child
Under an Apple Tree,189 the little Jesus is holding the apple in his hands. In fact, the Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art mentions that the apple is often present in pictures of the Virgin and Child and has a particular symbolism attached to it, “The apple, usually held in the infant‟s hand, is traditionally the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and therefore alludes to him as the future
Redeemer of mankind from Original Sin.”190 There is another quite interesting scene in this same category, it is however unusual and very rare. Petrus Christus‟
1460 Madonna of the Dry Tree191 which is an illustration of Ezek.17:24, “Then shall all the trees of the field know that it is I the Lord who have abased the lofty tree and exalted the lowly tree, who have dried up the green tree and made the withered tree bud,”192 presents the Virgin Mary inside a tree. This dry tree is the
Tree of Knowledge, “which withered when Adam and Eve ate its fruit [and] was
186 Web Gallery of Art. 9 January 2010.
It is a reminder that the Fall of Man, initiated by Eve, is redressed by the new Eve
(Mary).”193
Another scene is the Crucifixion. It is often taught that Jesus was crucified on the grave of Adam. Early Christian commentators, such as Origen and
Chromatius, interpret Golgotha to be both the place where Adam was buried and where Jesus was crucified. In his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew,
Chromatius writes about the importance of this location, a place where death once entered (the death that came from Adam) and life might arise (the life that came from Jesus).194 A skull is therefore often represented below the cross as a symbol of Adam. In the Westphalia School‟s early fifteenth century Allegory of the
Crucifixion,195 Adam and Eve are present. They appear at the very top of the cross, on the right. There, we see Eve giving a skull to Adam. Once again this is a reiteration of the story of Adam and Eve and of the concept of the original sin.
Here, the skull is the forbidden fruit, because death, that is mortality, is the consequence of eating from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
193 Maryan Wynn Ainsworth. Petrus Christus: Renaissance Master of Bruges. Contributions by Maximiliaan P.J. Martens (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, c.1994) 162-164. 194 Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Matthew 14-28, Edited by Manlio Simonetti (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, c.2002) 288. 195 Stefano Zuffi. Le Nouveau Testament:Guide des Arts (Paris, Éditions Hazan, 2003) 305 [Appendix 30]. 79
CONCLUSION
Biblical interpretation seeks to fill the gaps created by the text of the
Bible, to answer the questions posed by it, and to find solutions to its contradictions. In the process, it actually generates newer questions and newer contradictions and contributes to a dynamic process of analysis. Artists and interpreters alike seek to fill these gaps and although they do not always agree as to how they must be filled, they clearly intend to both clarify and justify the biblical text, making it understandable to reader and viewer.
The discussion of the parallels between the reasoning of biblical interpreters and that of the artists has shown the crossroads and divergences that exist between the two. Chapter by chapter, painting by panting, we discover these parallels. The phenomenon of abstraction and concretization that occurs with regards to the interpretation of Genesis‟ “fruit of the Tree of Knowledge” presents itself as a dialogue between the abstract word “fruit” employed in the biblical text and the concrete image of this fruit that appears in the visual representations of this text. As we have seen, the concrete fruit that usually represents the abstracted nature of the forbidden fruit is the apple. Artists often depict the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge as such, despite the fact that the interpretation of the forbidden fruit as being the apple does not correspond to the opinion of biblical interpreters, who rather imagine it as fig, vine, wheat, citron and other vegetation typical to the
Bible‟s time and place.
What is intriguing, however, is not where the apple came from or whether it existed or not during the biblical time, but that this fruit has remained in the foreground of all other candidates for the forbidden fruit. The apple initially 80 appeared in the re-written secondary versions of the story of Adam and Eve when it disguised itself as the forbidden fruit. Gradually, as it appeared and reappeared in works of art, surrounded by the characters of Adam and Eve, it eventually took possession of its role and became the forbidden fruit. Semiotically speaking, this is significant. Since its appearance in this biblical story, the apple has been used on various occasions to refer to this story, “an object sometimes does more than just identify, it may stand instead of someone or something. It is then no longer an attribute but has become a kind of visual metaphor, or symbol.”196 The Fall of
Man has been associated with the apple as a metonym. Typological representations of Adam and Eve in New Testament scenes support this association. An apple in the hands of Jesus or an apple placed in front of the
Virgin Mary during the annunciation is a good example of this use of semiotics and of the beginning of the so-called apple phenomenon, which fulfils the interrelation created between the text and its illustration through Religion and Art.
A crossroad has been formed when the apple entered the lives of Adam and Eve.
A divergence has nevertheless occurred and the two entities: the biblical story of
Adam and Eve and the interpretation of the forbidden fruit as an apple continue to lead their separate parallel existences. The misinterpretation that once served to connect the apple with the forbidden fruit has been a believable mistake. Now that it has appropriated the meanings of temptation, sin, lust, and knowledge, the apple survives as a metonym of these meanings in contexts that are not connected to the
196 James Hall. Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, Introduction by Kenneth Clark. 2nd ed. (Boulder: Westview Press, c.2008) xii. 81 story of Adam and Eve per say. It thus continues to coexist with and without the text, forever attached to the symbol of the very first object of temptation.
The absence of the forbidden fruit in representations of Adam and Eve is that which appears most interesting with regards to the problem of abstraction and concretization. In fact, the deliberate choice of the artist to avoid representing a fruit in depictions of Adam and Eve shows the artist‟s attempt to keep, within art, the abstraction of the word “fruit” as well as to mirror the existing interpretation that the identity of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is purposefully not revealed in the text. This concealment is the only instance where the gaps of the Biblical text are not in the process of being explained, resolved, or justified, but where, rather, the artists attempt to present these textual gaps, to accentuate them and to give them meaning.
82
APPENDIX
1. Shaul Shapiro, Map of the Cultivated Landscapes of Biblical Israel. 1982.
2. Thomas Cole, The Garden of Eden. Oil on canvas, 97.8 x 134 cm., 1828. Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.
3. Nicolas Poussin, The Spring. Adam and Eve in Paradise. Oil on canvas, 117 x 150 cm., 1660-64. Musée du Louvre, Paris.
4. Jan Brueghel the Elder, Garden of Eden. Oil on copper, 50.3 x 80.1 cm., 1612. Galleria Doria-Pamphili, Rome.
5. Limbourg Brothers, “Temptation, Fall and Expulsion,” in The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. Vellum, 29 x 21 cm., 1411-16. Musée Condé, Chantilly.
6. The Boucicaut Master, “Story of Adam and Eve,” in Concerning the Fates of Illustrious Men and Women. Tempera and gold on parchment, 42 x 29.6 cm., 1415. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
7. Charles Joseph Natoire, The Expulsion from Paradise. Oil on copper, 67.9 x 50.2 cm., 1740. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
8. “Adam and Eve,” in Boccaccio‟s De Claris Mulieribus. Woodcut, 26.6 x 19.8 cm., 1487. Bodleian Library, Oxford.
9. “Adam and Eve, Eating the Apple and Being Expelled from Paradise,” in the Nuremberg Chronicles. Woodcut, 45 x 31 cm., 1493. Private Collection.
10a. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Adam and Eve. Oil on panel, 172 x 63 cm. and 167 x 61 cm., 1528. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
10b. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Adam and Eve. Oil on panel, 1508-10. Musée des Beaux-Arts et d‟Archéologie, Besançon.
10c. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Adam and Eve. Oil on panel, 117 x 80 cm., 1526. Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery, London.
11. Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve. Oil on panel, 209 x 81 cm. (each), 1507. Museo del Prado, Madrid.
12. Hans Baldung Grien, Adam and Eve. Oil on panel, 208 x 83.5 cm. (each), 1524. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.
13. Hendrik Goltzius, The Fall of Man. Oil on canvas, 104.5 x 138.4 cm., 1616. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
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14. Hugo Van der Goes, Original Sin. Oil on panel, 35.5 x 23.2 cm., 1467-68. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
15. Jacopo Tintoretto, Adam and Eve. Oil on canvas, 220 x 150 cm., c.1550. Gallerie dell‟Accademia, Venice.
16. “Adam and Eve,” in the Codex Series nova 2612 (Speculum Humanae Salvationis). Coloured pen drawing, 28 x 20 cm., c.1336. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.
17. Jan Van Eyck, “Adam and Eve,” in the Ghent Altarpiece. Oil on wood. 213.3 x 32.3 cm. (each), 1432. Cathedral of St. Bavon, Ghent.
18. “Temptation of Adam and Eve,” in Florence Miniature (MS. C2 Antiphonary). 1481. Museo dell‟ Opera del Duomo, Florence.
19. “Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,” in the Codex Aemilianensis. 994. El Escorial, Real Biblioteca de San Lorenzo.
20. Master of Catherine of Cleves, “Even and the Virgin,” in the Hours of Catherine of Cleves. Vellum, 19.2 x 13 cm., c.1440. Morgan Library and Museum, New York.
21. Berthold Furtmeyr, “Tree of Death and Life,” in the Salzburger Missale. 1481. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich.
22. Fra Angelico, Altarpiece of the Annunciation. Tempera on panel, 154 x 194 cm., 1430-32. Museo del Prado, Madrid.
23. Carlo Crivelli, The Annunciation. Oil on canvas, 207 x 146.7 cm., 1486. The National Gallery, London.
24. Petrus Christus, The Nativity. Oil on wood, 130 x 97 cm., c.1445. The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
25. Francesco Marmitta, Virgin and Child Flanked by Saints Benedict and Quentin. 220 x 138 cm., 1500-05. Musée du Louvre, Paris.
26. Carlo Crivelli, Triptych of Camerino. Tempera on panel, 1482. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.
27. Carlo Crivelli, Virgin and Child Enthroned. Tempera on panel, 107 x 55 cm., c.1476. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.
28. Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Virgin and Child Under the Apple Tree. Oil on canvas, 87 x 59 cm., c.1530. The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
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29. Petrus Christus, Madonna of the Dry Tree. Oil on wood, 17.4 x 12.4 cm., c.1465. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
30. Westphalia School, Allegory of the Crucifixion. 28.5 x 18.5 cm., c.1400. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.
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Appendix 1
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Appendix 2
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Appendix 3
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Appendix 4
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Appendix 5
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Appendix 6
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Appendix 7
92
Appendix 8
93
Appendix 9
94
Appendix 10a
95
Appendix 10b
96
Appendix 10c
97
Appendix 11
98
Appendix 12
99
Appendix 13
100
Appendix 14
101
Appendix 15
102
Appendix 16
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Appendix 17
104
Appendix 18
105
Appendix 19
106
Appendix 20
107
Appendix 21
108
Appendix 22
109
Appendix 23
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Appendix 24
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Appendix 25
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Appendix 26
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Appendix 27
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Appendix 28
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Appendix 29
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Appendix 30
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