Fall of Man

Spranger's 'Fall of Man' (1593), on panel in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, depicts the archetypal scene from Genesis in which Adam and Eve accept the forbidden fruit from the serpent. Spranger's treatment brings the full sophistication of his Mannerist figure style to the most foundational narrative in Christian tradition, rendering the first human sin as an elegant encounter between idealized nude figures in a lush garden. The tension between the theological gravity of the subject and the aesthetic pleasure taken in depicting nude bodies was a characteristically Mannerist condition — one that Spranger navigated by making the figures' physical beauty itself emblematic of the pre-lapsarian state, soon to be lost. By 1593 Spranger was at the height of his powers and his closest association with Emperor Rudolf II, who collected religious and mythological subjects alike for their formal qualities as much as their iconographic content. The panel support suggests this was a luxury commission, with the harder ground allowing the precisely controlled surface Spranger could achieve on wood.

On panel, the composition achieves the jewel-like surface quality associated with Spranger's most finished work. Adam and Eve's idealized nude forms occupy the foreground, with the serpent-entwined tree providing a vertical axis. Spranger's smooth flesh modelling gives the figures an almost sculptural quality, while the garden vegetation is rendered with botanical precision appropriate to Paradise.