Consider all evil to be gone from the world. What would that world be like? Would humans roam the world naked with no worries? Would animals wander freely without needing to hunt each other? Would pain and sorrow cease to exist, and all worry be tucked away forever? Good people seek to make the world this way, a world at peace and to remove toil and pain from human existence, which we were cursed to carry forever. Adam and Eve had this peace. They needn’t worry about their next meal or their nakedness, let alone even think about working to survive. Everything they ever needed was available to them, whenever they needed it.
‘Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’” Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”‘ Genesis 3:1-5 (NKJV)
1. Michelangelo — Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden: One Panel, Two Falls
Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco is divided into two parts. On the left, the serpent takes human form and gives Eve fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam seems to be trying to stop the serpent, yet is unsuccessful, as the serpent is wrapped tightly around the tree and ready to fulfill its intention of having humanity expelled from the Garden. On the right side of the panel, an angel directs Adam and Eve, who look ashamed and covered by dark shadow, capturing the shame that follows the angel’s direction to exit the Garden. Michelangelo successfully tells the story of the fall of paradise in one panel by splitting it into two parts and using the tree, the catalyst, and the serpent to separate the story for the viewer.
‘So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.’ Genesis 3:6-7 (NKJV)
2. The Bernward Doors of Hildesheim: The Doors You’d Walk Past Every Sunday for 1,000 Years
The bronze doors of the Hildesheim Cathedral are located in Hildesheim, Germany, with two columns divided into eight panels each. The left column tells stories from the Old Testament, and the right column tells stories from the New Testament. Since we’re focused on Genesis, we’ll look at the carvings on the left column:
Left Column of Bernward Doors: Old Testament (Top to Bottom)
- Gott erweckt Adam / Adam nach der Erschaffung
- God awakens Adam / Adam after Creation
- Zusammenführung von Adam und Eva
- Presentation / Bringing together of Adam and Eve
- Sündenfall
- The Fall of Man (The Temptation)
- Verhör und Verurteilung von Adam und Eva
- Interrogation and Condemnation of Adam and Eve
- Vertreibung aus dem Paradies
- Expulsion from Paradise
- Erdenleben
- Life on Earth / Labors of Adam and Eve
- Opfer von Kain und Abel
- Offerings of Cain and Abel
- Verurteilung Kains / Fratrizid (Brudermord)
Interestingly, the story of Adam and Eve and their first two sons is told in eight panels, which attendants of Hildesheim Cathedral would see every time they entered the church — while witnessing redemption on the opposite column. Each time parishioners walked into the church, they were reminded of their need for the church and for Jesus Christ, the Redeemer. Imagine a story so important to humanity that bronze casters used a lost-wax process, carving each scene into wax or tallow tablets, down to the door knockers. But why would they go through the trouble of having these doors cast? The middle bar, in Latin, explains its purpose. The inscription reads:
AN[NO] DOM[INI] INC[ARNATIONIS] M XV B[ERNVARDVS] EP[ISCOPVS] DIVE MEM[ORIE] HAS VALVAS FVSILES IN FACIE[M] ANGELICI TE[M]PLI OB MONIM[EN]T[VM] SVI FEC[IT] SVSPENDI
(In the 1015th year of the incarnation of the Lord, Bishop Bernward, richly remembered, had these cast doors hung at the front of the angelic temple to his own memory) (Bernward Doors).
This inscription answers the question of the doors’ purpose: to commemorate Lord Bishop Bernward, who, according to Catholic.org, was elected bishop of Hildesheim in 993, built St. Michael’s church and monastery there, and administered his See capably. He was interested in architecture, art, and metalwork, and created several metalwork pieces himself.
3. The Tree of Life Floor Mosaic — Otranto Cathedral: A Cathedral Floor the Size of Two Basketball Courts
The Cathedral of Santa Maria Annunziata is located in Otranto, Italy, and is home to a mosaic floor spanning 600 square meters. The Tree of Life sits at the center of the floor: its roots mark the beginning of creation and Eden, and as the trunk shoots up vertically, the branches divide to capture stories from scripture. The floor was commissioned by Archbishop Gionata:
“The cathedral floor retains an extensive twelfth?century mosaic pavement laid between 1163 and 1165, executed under the direction of the Basilian monk Pantaleone from the monastery of San Nicola di Casole at the commission of Archbishop Gionata; the imagery ranges from Old Testament episodes… (Ancient-History-Sites.com).”
The mosaic floor doesn’t only depict images from scripture, it also shares secular stories to record human history, such as Alexander the Great’s ascension to heaven, carried by two griffins. But where are Adam and Eve, you might ask? Where is the Garden, and why is this relevant to scripture? On the left side of the Tree of Life, Adam and Eve stand with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life, depicting the moment of temptation.
4. Temptation of Adam and Eve — Notre-Dame de Paris: The Serpent With Arms
Continuing the theme of sculpture and architectural works, the Temptation of Adam and Eve has been sculpted into the pedestal of the statue of the Madonna with Child at the western portal (of the Virgin) of Notre-Dame de Paris, France. Here, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is centered, with Adam to the left and Eve to the right. Adam watches Eve actually eat from the fruit as she hands it to him — as the story goes, he will shortly eat of it too. The serpent is mostly in serpent form, but from the torso up it takes a human figure, wearing a slight smile that won’t become a full grin until Adam takes the fruit. You can sense the serpent’s eyes patiently waiting to break that composure. In this moment, the serpent usurps God’s creation, and the fall of man begins. Would this representation of the serpent be more accurate than showing a full snake, since the serpent was later cursed to crawl on its belly without limbs? Here it still has arms and clawed paws, which is an uncommon depiction.
The next two examples are more classical representations of Adam and Eve’s temptation in the garden. Both pieces were made during a similar period, the Late Renaissance, and offer more realistic depictions of the fall of man.
5. Lucas Cranach the Elder — Adam and Eve: A Serpent True to Size
In Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Adam and Eve (1526), the animals in the scene are true to what people have actually experienced — you won’t find whimsical camels with wings or griffins here, and the serpent is true to size compared with Adam and Eve. Adam seems to contemplate joining Eve in eating the fruit as he remembers God’s one command to him. Mesmerized by Eve, we later learn he too will eat the fruit.
6. Titian — The Fall of Man: The Serpent Disguised as a Baby
In Titian’s The Fall of Man (1550), Adam seems cautious and wants Eve to reconsider what the serpent suggests. But in this scene, the serpent that captures Eve’s attention takes the form of a baby with a hidden serpent-like tail that Eve may not see, though Adam can. Eve seems captivated by the infant serpent, gravitating toward it and following an imperative, primal instinct to care for the child, going along with its cries and demands — which may explain how Eve could have been tricked. Both images are similar in style, yet interpret and depict Genesis 3 with subtle but enormous differences.
7. Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder — The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man: The Symbols Hiding in Plain Sight
How marvelous and colorful the Garden of Eden appears in Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder’s The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man (1615). The trees and their leaves look so realistic that an arborist might be able to identify which species are shown. The animals are just as accurately depicted, down to their actions — foxes playing, birds perched on branches, fish swimming, swans flapping their wings — and each one’s eyes are turned toward the moment at the center, where Eve hands Adam the fruit. Eve is given attractive curves and long hair that flows past her waist, representing her femininity. Sunlight falls on her and Adam as she passes him fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Rubens started the painting. Very sketchily, in thin paint, he painted Adam and Eve, the tree, the horse, and the serpent. Then Brueghel took on the plants and animals, which he painted with encyclopaedic precision in finishing paint (Web Gallery of Art).
One intentional detail I noticed is the layout of the trees, and how the sky peeks through behind them to frame Adam and Eve and lead the viewer’s eye toward them. Near the turkey, there’s a monkey also holding fruit which at the time, a monkey represented evil, which most historians now consider a symbol of what was to come. There are also grapes above Adam’s head, likely representing the wine to come: the blood of Christ, who would redeem both Adam and Eve, and all of humanity. The last detail I’d like to note is that the serpent has horns, like a viper or rattlesnake.
8. Marc Chagall — Adam and Eve: The Painting With No Serpent
Marc Chagall’s Adam and Eve is a Cubist exploration of the moment just before the unforgivable sin takes place. Adam, in gold coloring on the left, faces downward and away from the fruit, while Eve allows the betrayal of God to take place. Eve has two faces — one looking toward the fruit and the serpent, and one looking away from Adam, toward what’s next rather than staying in the present. Her skin is fair, and her body is rendered in angular forms, in contrast with the curving leaves and foliage behind the figures. Both Adam and Eve grasp the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, whose trunk vertically separates the two, dead center. One thing I noticed about this piece is that there’s no distinct representation of a serpent, yet the bodies of Adam and Eve are serpent-like themselves, curving and turning toward the top of the tree. Chagall used oil on canvas and Cubism — a movement of his time — to bring a story as old as time into the modern era.
9. Salvador Dalí — Adam and Eve Sculpture: When the Serpent Takes the Shape of a Heart
Dalí was once an artist I did not resonate with. His works felt borderline blasphemous to me. I couldn’t understand how surrealism could be trusted not to hide subtle symbolism that we perceive as God-honoring but that was actually intended to represent evil. But the longer I studied his work, the more mathematical and engineered it seemed to me. This bronze and green patina sculpture was made using the same lost-wax process as the Bernward Doors of Hildesheim (1015). With familiar characters, Adam to the left, Eve to the right, it echoes the same layout found throughout this list. The serpent is centered in the shape of a tree trunk leading up to a heart facing Adam. Eve offers the fruit to Adam, with Dalí centering the serpent’s heart as the focal point, while Adam’s right hand is lifted as if to symbolize indecision and reluctance toward the fruit. The serpent seems to face Adam, as he is the final piece needed to begin the fall of man. Once Adam eats of the fruit, the serpent, Satan, has completed his mission. There’s real tension here: the serpent represents evil, and Adam knows it, yet it shapes itself into a heart, which is confusing. Love symbolizes Jesus Christ and God, and it’s striking to me how you can face evil even as it takes the shape of love — which is, in a strange way, a truly effective representation of temptation.
10. Paula Rego — Paradise: The Only Adam Who Fights Back
Paula Rego’s Paradise (1985) is a modern acrylic piece that I wouldn’t have immediately recognized as her version of Paradise. Centered are Adam and Eve, both clothed. Adam wears a hula skirt, while Eve is in more modern attire, with makeup and a hat, stylized more realistically than Adam. The creatures throughout the scene are tropically colored in bright blues, pinks, and greens, representing creatures of the sea and beach. The trees in the background are palm-like, and most of the plants and creatures seem to be of the sea, which truly reflects what most modern people would consider paradise: an escape to the sea, away from modern stressors. It gives me a sense of how far humanity has strayed from its natural roots, where paradise now seems like an extreme idea rather than something familiar. This piece stands out to me as the only one where I found Adam holding the serpent by its head, leaving it unable to slither away and lead humanity toward death. This scene seems to capture a moment of failure for the serpent, where Adam chose to protect Eve rather than let her keep talking to it. You can see Eve enjoying a moment with condor or vulture chicks, sharing a playful moment — a reminder of when humans could be with animals without fear of being eaten.
What Came After: The Curse and the Promise
Reflecting on What Was Lost
In one abrupt moment, peace was traded for knowledge — to be like God — and a curse came upon Adam and Eve. The split second before all hell broke loose has been captured by artists in sculpture and canvas, not only to permanently record the past, but to give us perspective on what once was.