The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man
Peter Paul Rubens (c. 1615)
<strong>The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man</strong> stages the instant Eve passes the forbidden fruit to Adam as the serpent coils above and a teeming paradise encircles them. The panel fuses Peter Paul Rubens’s dramatic nudes with Jan Brueghel the Elder’s encyclopedic fauna and flora, turning Eden into a lush theatre of temptation and consequence <sup>[1]</sup>. Light isolates Eve’s raised arm and golden hair while predators stir at the margins, signaling paradise in the act of unraveling.
