Adam and Eve as Commonly Used Motifs in Medieval Art and Architecture - Essay Example

Adam and Eve were one of the most important and commonly used motifs throughout medieval art and architecture. The story of their life and fall is generally seen as one of the things that define humanities life in the eons that follow, especially in explaining the ways that the different genders live their lives – men having to work fields to survive and women having to go through the pain of childbirth, and the sins that tend to be attributed to men and women differently. The Genesis narrative tells of Adam and Eve being tempted by a serpent, and eating a fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thus thwarting God’s command, losing their innocence, and being punished for their trespasses. In most popular depictions, Eve is seen as having succumbed first, and tempted Adam into eating the fruit after she had already fallen. Interestingly, some artists choose to depict the two in separation from each other, which can accentuate their separation. Two of the most famous of these depictions are sculptures – one supposedly by Gislebertus of Eve, located in St. Lazare, Autun, France, and a life sized sculpture of Adam standing over six feet tall located in the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. These two depictions have nearly one hundred years separating them, with the depiction of eve being made circa 1130 and the depiction of Adam sometime around 1230. These depictions of Adam and Eve have several significant similarities, including subject matter, moment within the narrative of the fall of Adam and Eve, and facial expressions especially, though they differ greatly in expressions of character, mostly along gendered lines, with the Adam statue expressing a much more holy and thoughtful nature, while the Eve sculpture expresses a more physically bound, primal nature. One of the first things that becomes apparent when viewing these respective sculptures of Adam and Eve is that they depict very nearly the same moment in the Genesis story. In both sculptures, the protagonist has the fruit from the tree of knowledge in hand (in the Adam sculpture the fruit has since fallen off, but it was originally there). This means that in both of these sculptures Eve and Adam are in the exact moment of the fall – they have fallen to the serpent’s temptation, taken the fruit, but have yet to actually consume it and thus earn God’s eternal punishment. Both sculptures thus freeze the subject in the moment of ultimate humanity, and of ultimate fallibility – they almost beg the viewer to intervene and stop the process from occurring. Both of these sculptures depict nearly identical moments in the story of the fall of man. One of the most interesting things about both of these sculptures is that in both cases the subject has chosen to hide their genital region. Adam does so more actively, grabbing the plant in front of him and moving it to cover himself, while Eve simply lies behind an appropriately placed plant without directly interacting with it in any real way. This covering is interesting because, in the biblical account, Adam and Eve only choose to cover themselves once they have actually eaten from the fruit and discover that they are naked, and thus feel shame for the first time. In both of these depictions, however, as mentioned previously neither Adam nor Eve had actually eaten of the forbidden fruit, so they should not know shame according to the Biblical account, and should be freely showing off in all of their nudity. There could be several explanations for this shyness. One is probably the simplest, and could very well be the most accurate: many would feel that it is simply not appropriate to show Adam and Eve without coverings in a church, where both of these works of art were originally intended to be displayed. But there are also several more subtle explanations of why this choice could be made. One could be foreshadowing, a simple narrative element reminding the audience of these works where the story will end up. A final, and even more subtle explanation is that this placement could be made to remind the audience of their fallen state, to show them that because of the sins of their forefathers things like nudity are now taboo; by covering the private regions of Adam and Eve, these two artists may be drawing attention to the artifice of the world we live in, its unnaturalness, and be subtly chastising the viewer for their role in it. For whatever reason, it is certainly interesting that both artists choose to cover Adam and Eve before the actual moment of the fall despite the fact that it conflicts with the biblical account. One of the final things that is incredibly interesting and relatively unique about these two sculptures is the fact that in each of them one of the protagonists of the story of the fall of man, either Adam or Eve, is shown in complete isolation from the other. In the vast majority of depictions, they are shown completely together. This creates several interesting effects. One of these is a slight alteration of the common conception of the story of the fall of man – by showing Eve taking the fruit without Adam there to receive it, Gislebertus de-emphasizes the importance of Eve as the temptress, as the person who leads to Adams fall, but rather makes her own fall personal, related to her-self. Likewise, the sculptor of Adam, by showing him contemplatively looking at the fruit, rather than accepting it from Eve or standing next to Eve having clearly recently received it, emphasizes his own role in choosing to eat the fruit, and his own personal fall rather than simply pinning all of the blame on Eve. Displaying each protagonist in isolation makes the fall more about each of them individually, and less about their relationship, either as the temptress or the fool who follows her. This would probably make the story of the fall more personal to each individual worshiper who was meant to see these sculptures – men, seeing Adam, might reflect on their own follies and personal falls, and take responsibility for them rather than thinking of whose fault they are, whilst women, seeing this Eve, might take to heart the idea that the fall truly damaged her, and all of her descendents, focusing on the personal consequences of their own faults and focusing less on the roll that society would usually pin them in. While there are many similarities between these two sculptures, and many ways they cleverly play off of similar themes, there are also important distinctions. These distinctions usually relate to differences commonly ascribed to gender, and thus represented here in the depictions of the archetypal gender creators, Adam and Eve, though some also relate to the gulf of time that separates the creation of the two works. One of the most immediately obvious differentiations is poses – Eve is depicted in a reclined position, reaching carelessly behind her for the apple, whilst Adam is shown erect, standing and contemplating the apple more actively. The differences in these poses is simply the prone versus the standing position. Eve’s prone position implies a powerlessness, a lack of agency that the artist ascribes to women, whereas Adam’s standing position implies his strong ability to act as he chooses. These poses also have an impact on the story of the fall – Eve’s reclined position, which indicates a lack of agency, seems to lessen her burden of guilt for the fall of man. She, as a supposedly powerless woman, should not have been the one to choose better. But it could also simply imply a lack of willingness to stand up and fight temptation. Adam’s standing position implies the ability to make active choices, and stand against evil – yet he, the audience knows, will in very short order make a decision that will doom all of his descendents. This could show the ultimate fallibility of man, and also places much more burden for the fall on Adam than is often ascribed to him. Eve and Adam’s prone and standing positions, respectively, both represent biases of gender in medieval imagination and function as a retelling of the classic story. The poses of Adam and Eve, standing and prone respectively, are not the only differences in their body position that carry a great deal of symbolism to differentiate them and their gender roles. Another is the position of the fruit in relation to their body. Adam is holding the fruit in front of his face, using his mental faculties to act on it, showing a connection between the decisions he makes regarding it and his mind. This connects to the medieval conception of men having stronger mental and reasoning faculties than women – Adam interacts with the world through his mind, just as all men do. While Adam holds the fruit in front of his face, Eve, on the other hand, caresses the fruit near her hips and belly, decidedly on the lower half of her frame. The fruit is thus inherently connected to the more primal aspects of Eve, and the parts of her body that relate to them. This plays an important role not only in the telling of the story of the fall, where, in classic medieval conception it is not only Eve’s lack of mental interaction with the world that leads to her fall, but also her inability to stand up to her primal urges. This conception was then applied to the rest of women in medieval times, and Eve, and it was commonly believed that women had strong passions, both sexual and otherwise, than men, and thus were more likely to be led astray. The fruit position in these two sculptures represent common conceptions of gender in the medieval period, showing men who interact with the world cognitively and women who interact with it through passions of the body. One final and relatively minor difference between these two scultpre is realism and attention to detail on the body. Adam is clearly more detailed than Eve, with a great deal more concern towards depicting actual human muscles and form. This probably has mostly to do with changes in artistic taste between the production of the Eve sculpture and the Adam one, and the growing pre-renaissance taste for a more realistic and refined form of art. These depictions of Adam and Eve are incredibly interesting. They share a great number of similarities with each other, including capturing the exact same moment in the story of the fall and interestingly depicting Adam without Eve and Eve without Adam, something extremely rare in medieval art. But they also had some striking differences, which represent many of the cultural and gender norms of the societies that produced them. Read More