Creation and Fall of Man

Mariotto Albertinelli painted this Creation and Fall of Man around 1510, depicting the Genesis narrative in a multi-scene format that compressed the beginning of human history into a single painted field. Working in Florence as Fra Bartolommeo's close friend and frequent collaborator—the two painters briefly shared a workshop—Albertinelli brought the High Renaissance formal ideals of balance and clarity to Old Testament subjects. His figure types reflect his study of both Florentine masters and Fra Bartolommeo's monumental approach to the human form. The Creation and Fall sequence—God breathing life into Adam, the temptation in the garden, the expulsion—offered painters opportunity to explore both ideal human beauty and moral catastrophe in a single unified composition.

The panel shows Albertinelli's characteristic sculptural modeling with the idealized nude figures rendered in the warm Florentine palette and balanced compositional structure of the Fra Bartolomeo workshop.