Adam

Adam, painted in 1507 and now in the Prado Madrid (forming a pair with Eve), is Dürer's most developed treatment of the ideal human body as he understood it through his Italian experience and his own theoretical investigations. The nude figure of the first man, constructed through careful measurement and proportion derived from classical sculpture and Italian Renaissance practice, represents Dürer's attempt to define the ideal human form through rational method. The painting is simultaneously a demonstration of his technical mastery of the nude figure, a theological statement about the human body before the Fall, and a theoretical document in the ongoing project of defining the ideal of human beauty that occupied him throughout his career.

The full-length nude figure is painted with a combination of idealized proportions and naturalistic detail—muscular anatomy rendered with scientific precision while the overall form follows classical canons of beauty. The dark background isolates the figure as a study in human form.