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Franz von Stuck combined originality with enormous popularity. He conveyed his own advanced, often explicitly sexual imagery in singularly unthreatening fashion. His oeuvre has a strong sense of plasticity bringing him close to such contemporaries as Bourdelle and Maillol.
Von Stuck devoted many canvases to Sin, which was among his favourite and most profitable themes, and he often provided them with lovingly designed frames. In the present 1893 version, Sin, sister of Eve - or Eve herself - flashes her torso, a suitably phallic serpent slung over the Original Sinner's shoulder like a fox stole. By 1897, sexual associations with this image were made more overt by having the serpent writhe between Sin's legs.
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