Raphael's Creation, Rembrandt's Fall Author(s): David R. Smith Source: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 50. Bd., H. 4 (1987), pp. 496-508 Published by: Deutscher Kunstverlag GmbH Munchen Berlin Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1482420 Accessed: 01-05-2020 13:45 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1482420?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Deutscher Kunstverlag GmbH Munchen Berlin is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte This content downloaded from 85.72.204.160 on Fri, 01 May 2020 13:45:45 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms OW oo oi At. i lr ? r ?" , .. " . i. Rembrandt, The Fall of Man, 1638, etching, London, British Museum David R. Smith Raphael's Creation, Rembrandt's Fall To anyone accustomed to the traditionally movements and gestures. Naturalism here is un- idealized nudity of Adam and Eve in the Gardenmistakably of a consciously antiheroic style. More Eden, the first encounter with Rembrandt's than etch- once, scholars have seen in this first man and ing of The Fall of Man of 1638 (fig. i, B. woman28) must a prehistoric, simian quality that by its come as something of a shock. And so very he must nature has seemed to entail a sweeping revi- have meant it to be. Compared with virtually sion of theall very concept of paradise'. On the other their predecessors in the Renaissance tradition, his Carl Neumann, Rembrandt, 3rd ed., Munich 1922, I, Adam and Eve are unusually old and uncommonly 143; Werner Weisbach, Rembrandt, Berlin and Leipzig ugly, with sagging flesh and awkward, graceless 1926, 246; Richard Hamann, Rembrandt, Berlin 1948, 496 This content downloaded from 85.72.204.160 on Fri, 01 May 2020 13:45:45 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 2. Rembrandt, Diana Bathing, etching, London, British Museum hand, these figures also resemble those in a number youth in the myth seems inescapable. To him of Rembrandt's early mythological works, where pagan gods and heroes were not transcendent be- he uses ugliness to undercut the content as well as ings, but all-too-mortal flesh, subject to normal the form of the classical vision. In her physical ap- fears, weaknesses, and blemishes'. pearance his early Diana Bathing (fig. 2; B. 201), Despite such comparisons, however, Rem- for example, might be a close relative of his Eve, brandt's intentions in The Fall of Man remain elu- though her personality is perhaps more appealing. I45; Gerard Knuttel, Rembrandt, de meester en zijn The same might be said of the Andromeda (Br. werk, Amsterdam 1956, III. 462) in the Mauritshuis. And The Rape of 'Margarita Russell, >,The iconography of Rembrandt's Ganymede of I635 in Dresden (fig. 3; Br. 471) ap- The Rape of Ganymede,w Simiolus, IX, 1977, 5-I8, has argued that the artist did not intend this painting as a sa- pears to be a still deeper undermining of classical tire, as traditionally has been assumed, but as a neop- ideals. Whether or not Rembrandt intended the latonic allegory on the union of the soul with God after picture to be a serious metaphor for the union of death. Her view is seconded by James M. Saslow, Ganymede in the Renaissance: Homosexuality in Art the soul with God, as the Ganymede story often is and Society, New Haven and London i986, 185-91. Itis in Renaissance art, his parody of the beautiful certainly possible that Rembrandt's painting is in some 497 This content downloaded from 85.72.204.160 on Fri, 01 May 2020 13:45:45 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 3. Rembrandt, The Rape of Ganymede, 1635, Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen sive. Is he attacking the classical ideal as such, or been harder to find for The Fall of Man. Those that are the ugliness and wretchedness of Adam and have been put forward, notably Raphael's The Fall Eve only incidentally unclassical, the direct result sense about salvation, but his unidealized vision of an of his reading of the scriptural account? For a man infantilized Ganymede who is distinctly unenthusiastic of his religious convictions, the moral issues raised about his journey to heaven suggests a Protestant sense by the story of the Fall must inevitably have cut of the gulf between the sacred and the profane that dif- fers markedly from Renaissance versions of the deeper than satire and parody, as the grimness of Ganymede myth. The artist's irreverent attitude toward the scene attests. And what exactly would he have the classical models he must have known also suggests a been parodying here? If scholars usually have criticism of classical ideals, both their forms and their heroic vision of humanity. For the more traditional, and found it easier to detect satire in mythological in my view more correct, view that Rembrandt's paint- scenes such as the Diana, the Andromeda, and the ing is satirical, see Julius S. Held, >Rembrandt and the Ganymede, this is largely because the images can Classical World,(< in Rembrandt after Three Hundred Years: A Symposium - Rembrandt and his Followers, be tied to more or less specific prototypes of a ed. Deirdre C. Stam, Chicago 1973, 59-60. more idealizing character3. Such parallels have On the relationship between Rembrandt's Diana Ba- 498 This content downloaded from 85.72.204.160 on Fri, 01 May 2020 13:45:45 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms of Man in the Stanza della Segnatura, suggested by been exchanged for Diirer's serpent, and for the Valentiner, and an Altdorfer woodcut of the sub- upper half of Adam's body, Rembrandt has relied ject (B. i), by Miinz, have not been at all persua- on his own sketch of the figure in a preparatory sive4. Yet we know that Rembrandt did turn to the drawing in Leiden (fig. 6). Inevitably, reaching for earlier history of art in working out the image, for, an apple requires a different gesture than pointing as has long been recognized, the serpent is bor- to a missing rib. But the legs of Rembrandt's Adam rowed from Albrecht Diirer's The Harrowing of are unmistakably borrowed from his Italian coun- Hell (B. 16) from the Engraved Passion5. More- terpart, and both figures lean against a rock. In the over, the triadic, symmetrical structure of the case of the two Eves, on the other hand, the overall composition places the print in the mainstream poses are remarkably alike, though they are virtu- tradition of the representation of the Fall in ally antithetical images of woman. Each stands medieval and Renaissance art. What sets it apart is frontally with her head inclined toward her hus- that its axis rests on Eve rather than on the Tree of band and her hands meeting at her chest, the one Knowledge, as is far more often the case. There is, modestly to shield her bosom, the other slyly to however, a distinguished classical model for Rem- offer the apple. Finally, Raphael's influence brandt's etching, one that I believe casts a revealing douptless accounts for what Christopher White light on his interpretation of the theme. That sees as a newly classical sense of form and contour source is Raphael's fresco of The Creation of Eve in Rembrandt's definition of the nude in this print7. in the Vatican Logge (fig. 4)6. Raphael's God has which is, however, unknown to me. But I assume that the similarity is not very compelling, for he makes only thing and a print of Susanna and the Elders by Annibale the briefest mention of it. Werner Hofmann et al., Carracci, see J. Bruyn, >Rembrandt and the Italian Luther und die Folgen fiir die Kunst, exh. cat., Baroque,< Simiolus, IV, 1970, 28-29. I would reject, Kunsthalle, Hamburg 1983, 322, no. 187, suggests that however, Bruyn's contention that Rembrandt would Rembrandt's print is indebted to Lucas van Leyden's not have considered his etching unclassical. His sugges- engraving of The Fall of abour I o6 (B. 7), but the only tion that our understanding of what constitutes proper similarity is that Lucas's Adam is also a rather aged and classical form is somehow >modern< and anachronistic unpleasant character. His Eve, on the other hand, is or that Rembrandt was free, according to the standards young and pretty, and the composition centers on the of his time, to mix a classical pose with >naturalistic ob- Tree of Knowledge. Finally, F. Schmidt-Degener, servation< seems to me to be unfounded. For a discus- >>Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam,< Verslagen omtrent 's sion of Renaissance models for the Andromeda, see A. B. rijks verzamelingen van geschiedenis en kunst 1934, de Vries et al., Rembrandt in the Mauritshuis, Alphen aan LVII, 1935, 22, suggests that the elephant in the de Rijn 1978, 68-70. On The Rape ofGanymede, see n. 2. background of Rembrandt's print is based on a print by 4 Wilhelm R.