This is part of the Divine Design series where we explore scripture through the lens of art history
Genesis 2: The Moment Man Became
“Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown. For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground, but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” Genesis 2:1-7 NKJV
Reading this, I can only imagine what it would mean to have the breath of God inside you. To be brought to life by Him, the One and Only, and wake up staring back into His eyes. That moment, to feel so special to be the first and only son of God Himself, would have me feel righteous, impenetrable, and so incredibly chosen.
William Blake’s Elohim Creating Adam (1795): God Over a Soulless Man
The one piece I found that captures this moment in scripture well is William Blake’s “Elohim Creating Adam,” created in 1795 on a copperplate using planographic color printing, where unlike printing from a raised surface like a stamp, you print using a flat surface.
The print portrays God over Adam as Adam lies soulless on a pile of leaves with his arms stretched out and his leg wrapped by a vine symbolizing the snake, which was in Adam’s near future. God looks out and places His right hand on Adam’s head, ready to breathe life into Adam. The sun behind God is the backdrop for the moment man became, and like most depictions of God, you can see God here as an old man with wings larger than his arms, wings that are out of this world-heavy, thick, and strong, that even those who are not religious can tell this being was an more than an angel. Instead of God’s head being wrapped by stars or crowns, His whole body is crowned by the sun behind Him. Most of the image is dark in color due to thee copper but the faces of God and Adam have subtle lighting making them the focus of the print. The rays of the sun point toward God’s wings and body, and no matter where you look the color and iconography point to God, which makes the moment in question apparent. This is the grand moment Adam came to be, an intimate moment we get to observe.
Why Artists Have Always Studied the Body God Designed
Stepping back, when I think of the creation of Adam I think about the one masterpiece all great artists strive to master: the replication and capturing of the anatomy of man. God made a being so complex. To this day scientists consider the design of man to be a work of art and unlikely to be a creation that just came to be. Man was designed, and God designed him in such a way that artists study anatomy and practice until perfection.
Sketching human hands and feet are challenging to most and hard to perfect and capture in the mind. As artists we come to realize our extremities are taken for granted, as we cannot imagine them in our minds and draw them out without practice. The foot is triangular, the fingers are rectangular, and without the eye being trained to see these fine lines in our anatomy we cannot easily capture man’s hands and feet.
Tullio Lombardo’s Adam (c. 1490–95): Classical Perfection in Marble
In sculpture you subtract from an element and find an artwork within your element. In Tullio Lombardo’s Adam, currently held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the figure is carved smoothly from marble to depict Adam, the first man. Adam stands while holding a ball-like stone in his left hand and using a branch to hold himself up on his right. The style of this piece is classical Italian, circa 1490–95, where we can see Adam’s anatomy is perfectly captured.
One thing I noted was how Tullio chose to have Adam crowned with long curly hair, which displays his level of expertise in marble carving. How difficult, and how talented must you be to kay soft curls against Adam’s face? Adam’s hair curls and waves to his mid-neck, and when looked at closely one can imagine the amount of time and strategy it would take to make unique curls that make up a pattern of wavy locks on Adam’s head. This piece, a man carving out Adam, is symbolic. Unlike God, we cannot breathe life into our sculptures, but God can. Adam looks up and to the left, his eyes in motion-what captured his attention? Only Lombardo, his creator would know.
Auguste Rodin’s Adam (c. 1880): Muscle, Tension, and Earth
Bronze was used to sculpt Adam by Rodin. Adam looks down with his right foot pressed against a stone, the material he is cast out of. In this sculpture Adam looks down at himself, and Rodin focuses on the muscle structure of man. There is emphasis on Adam’s veins, tendons, and muscle, and unlike the first sculpture by Lombardo, this one has Adam’s private area covered by hair.
Adam is posed, not in movement, which leads me to think this piece’s purpose was to capture Adam as a work of art himself rather than relay a moment in Adam’s life. Adam’s right arm and shoulder are more stressed than that of his left side, and his hands and feet are positioned in a way where more of Adam’s muscle and veins protrude out. These details carved from bronze are a testament to how skilled Rodin was and another example of how God’s creation of Adam is a subject most studied by artists around the world.
To be able to carve or successfully draw man and his imperfections, muscles, blemishes, hair, shadows, and highlights is a marker for an upcoming artist. To be comfortable carving hands and feet with such accuracy makes you a master, and while Adam is mostly posed in the sculpture there is movement in this piece, as it seems Adam is likely to turn left from the rock he may push himself off against.
Antony Gormley’s Attend (2025): Man Reduced to His Simplest Form
Contemporary artists today take the body of man and study it to the bone, forgive the pun. Someone like Antony Gormley, a British sculptor, takes the human body and uses simple shapes such as rectangles and lines to form man. Unlike Rodin and Lombardo, Gormley forms man using more negative space, which is not necessarily classical or traditional.
In Attend, a piece from 2025 using cast iron, Gormley forms man with straight, jagged metal rusted parts that altogether make the shape of a man who stands alone, formed from an earthly matter, which brings me back to man being of earth, just as God made man from the earth He created. Gormley has multiple works where he uses simple shapes to form the complex man in simple poses, standing or laying down.
Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam: The Brain God Designed
One cannot discuss the creation of man without studying the piece that comes to mind first — Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam (discussed in our previous Creation of Adam post). This fresco leaves its audience in awe, and for good reason: it is a well-studied work with many discoveries still emerging, particularly when you consider how deeply Michelangelo studied human anatomy. He is considered a master of drawing human muscle, nerves, veins, hair, bones, hands, and feet. Below is an example of his study of the male left leg, where the muscle structure is rendered with striking accuracy. That discipline would serve him directly when he designed and executed the Sistine Chapel ceiling, where The Creation of Adam lives to this day.
How would this knowledge and practice of human anatomy serve Michelangelo, a devout Catholic who created works such as the Pietà and other anatomically precise pieces? He was hired because he knew exactly what he was doing. A hint at how accurate he was lies in The Creation of Adam itself — once an artist becomes well-practiced in their craft, they tend to have fun with it. In The Creation of Adam, the cloth that appears to be blowing in the wind behind God is actually shaped like a human brain, bringing to light that man’s mind was designed by God.
From Blake to Gormley: God’s Creation Is Still the Artist’s Subject
Until today, artists use the creation of Adam to practice telling the story of themselves and others — and in doing so, unknowingly pay homage to the first creator: God, who created Adam, who created you. Required by all art schools, the study of human anatomy begins with training your eye to truly look at the lines and shapes that make man who he is. You cannot fill in the gaps — as when new artists draw feet as an oddly shaped oval rather than the triangular form they actually are.