BALDUNG GRIEN, Hans
(b. 1484/85, Schwäbisch-Gmünd, d. 1545, Strasbourg)

Adam and Eve

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Oil on wood, 212 x 85 cm (each panel)
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Hans Baldung Grien was probably the greatest and the most talented of Dürer's pupils, his works being expressions of both an artistic and spiritual intensity. He exulted particularly in his interest for the female nude, a subject which he treated several times and portrayed in a dramatic confrontation death and therefore with the frailty of the body, thus offering up a macabre interpretation of the classical theme of vanitas.

The two figures are given solidity, and cultures, gracious expressions emerge from their faces, thus revealing the painter's interest for Italian Renaissance art. Baldung Grien was in fact a man of high culture; born into an educated family, he became the most authoritative exponent of the humanistic circle in Strasbourg, belonged to the cultural aristocracy and throughout his life had contacts with intellectuals and thinkers.