1. Bertoli, I mosaici di San Marco , 70, discusses the prominence of the lion, also honored in the following Noah scenes.

2. Weitzmann and Kessler, The Cotton Genesis , 54, point out that in the model, God originally stood to the picture's far left, Adam to its right, and the animals in the middle.

3. Evans, "Paradise Lost" and the Genesis Traditions , 39-40, discusses these rabbinical texts.

4. Chaps. 9 and 16 (PL 198:1063-64 and 1069-70); and see Evans's discussion of the text, 168-72.

5. O. Demus, Byzantine Mosaic Decoration , New Rochelle, N.Y., 1948, 8, discusses this Byzantine tradition, which would have been known in thirteenth-century Venice, as does Camille, The Gothic Idol , 223. Generally, evil figures were placed in profile so that the viewer could not be "trapped" by gazing into their eyes.

6. As in the approximately contemporary sculpture of the standing Christ by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano (Siena Cathedral Pulpit of 1265-68) or the thirteenth-century Bible moralisée illustrations, which contrast Eve's creation and her marriage to Adam to those of Ecclesia. See G. Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art , trans. J. Seligman, 2 VOLS., Greenwich, Conn., 1971, 2:134, 153, and fig. 507, and L. Silver and S. Smith, "Carnal Knowledge: The Late Engravings of Lucas van Leyden," Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 29 (1978): 259 and n. 82. That the taking of Adam's rib prophesies Christ's union with Ecclesia is standard, for example, in Peter Comestor's Historia scholastica and in Thomas Aquinas's Summa theologica of c. 1266-72 (pt. 1, q. 92, arts. 2 and 3).

7. On Christ's wound, see Friedman, "More on 'Right' and 'Left' in Painting," 124 and 129-30, and V. Gurewich, "Observations on the Iconography of the Wound in Christ's Side, with Special Reference to Its Position," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 20 (1957): 358-62. The associations of right (dexter) with positive traits and left (sinister) with evil ones are pervasive by the thirteenth century. Longstanding traditions were established in the ancient world, for example, the Greeks seeing the right as auspicious, and the left as ill-fortuned (C. J. Fordyce, Catullus , Oxford, 1961, 205-6; I thank Leslie Mechem for this reference). At the same time, medical discussions of the origins of the male and female linked male fetuses to those produced by sperm from the right testicle and eggs that implanted on the right side of the uterus, and females with those from and on the left. While Aristotle doubts the accuracy of this theory, it is repeated by many writers, from Galen (second cent.) to Albertus Magnus (twelfth cent.) to Levinus Lemnius (sixteenth cent.), and only seriously challenged beginning c. 1600. Thus the "leftness" of females is associated with their various physical and spiritual deficiencies. See H. R. Lemay, "Some Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Lectures on Female Sexuality," International Journal of Women's Studies 1 (1978): 391-400, who demonstrates how theological views of women merged with medical ones, leading to assertions that women's biological inferiority was dangerous to men; J. Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture , Cambridge and New York, 1993, 130-34; and I. Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Woman , Cambridge, 1980, chap. 3, especially 37-44, and 87-88, who includes many other medical stereotypes concerning the female body, e.g., as a privative version of the male, as naturally passive.

Various of the Kabbalah texts, many of which were being written in the thirteenth century, also examine the qualities of "right" and "left." See G. Scholem, Kabbalah , Jerusalem, 1974, 117 and 123, where left is associated with the power of uncleanliness and evil, active in Creation, and Bamberger, Fallen Angels , 173-86. J. Schuyler ("The Left Side of God: A Reflection of Cabala in Michelangelo's Genesis Scenes," Source 6 [1986]: 12-19) writes about the significance of the left-sided creation of Eve in Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling, linking it there to inferior feminine principles of the left side of the Sefiroth discussed in the Kabbalah. Muslim tradition relates that Eve was created from Adam's left side ( The Jewish Encyclopedia , New York and London, 1901-6, 5:275) Probably several of these medical and theological traditions contributed to Eve's creation from Adam's left side here at San Marco, all of which reconfirm her inherent inferiority.

8. The first-century writer Philo notes this, as does John Scotus Erigena (ninth cent.), who understood the Fall as occurring during Adam's sleep (Evans, "Paradise Lost" and the Genesis Traditions , 72 and 77).

Innocent III (Lothario dei Segni, d. 1216), in his De miseria humanae conditionis , confirms that "in carnal intercourse the mind's clarity is put to sleep" (ed. D. R. Howard, trans. M. M. Dietz, Indianapolis and New York, 1969, 8).

9. Weitzmann and Kessler, The Cotton Genesis , 54, note that some early Christian commentators made a connection between Adam's trance at Eve's birth and drunkenness. Noah's drunkenness is also a type for the Passion of Christ. Weitzmann and Kessler reconstruct the Cotton Genesis miniature with God first in the scene, followed by Adam; thus San Marco's mosaicists have reversed the figures.

10. Honorius of Autun, in his De imagine mundi of c. 1154-59, affirms that it was the wood of the Tree of Knowledge that was planted in Adam's mouth at Calvary. See J. O'Reilly, Studies in the Iconography of the Virtues and Vices , Ph.D. diss., University of Nottingham, 1972; Garland Reprint, New York, 1988, 342. Jacopo da Voragine's thirteenth-century Golden Legend , in the entry for May 3 ("Invention of the Holy Cross"), includes several versions of the story involving a tree of mercy—it is unclear which tree that is—and one where a branch from the tree that "caused Adam to sin" was planted in his mouth by Seth and became the tree of the Cross (ed. G. Ryan and H. Ripperger, New York, 1969, 269-70). Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art , 2:12-14 and 130-34, recounts a number of the legends linking Adam to the Tree of Life and the Cross, as does O'Reilly, 341-48. Both confirm the popularity of tree legends in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, partly due to Franciscan interest in the Cross (Bonaventura, for example, writes his meditations on the Cross) and partly due to the proliferation of relics of the True Cross in Europe at the time of the Crusades. San Marco itself housed an important relic of the True Cross in its Treasury, as will be discussed below.

11. There are numerous such crosses and trees, e.g., Schiller, 2:130-33, where figs. 15, 339, 389, 478, and 479 illustrate the former type, and figs. 370, 373, and 480 the latter (examples all date from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries). She also illustrates other traditions of Adam (and sometimes Eve) at the base of the Cross, e.g., where the tree or Cross grows from Adam's head, or where Adam squats like a telamon, supporting the Cross.

12. Bal, "Sexuality, Sin, and Sorrow," 323, discusses these terms, as does Bloom, The Book of J , 175-76 and 179-80. Analysis of this language and other parts of the Genesis text has led a number of contemporary biblical scholars to propose that the Genesis text per se is not particularly antifemale, but that later exegesis established the misogynist readings. Trible was one of the first to postulate this; more recently, Bloom has hypothesized that the J text was intended to be read ironically. Certainly the San Marco mosaics qualify as a misogynist re writing of Genesis.

13. As Joan Cadden notes, there is no single, widely held view regarding the differences between Adam and Eve in European culture between the late eleventh and fourteenth centuries, yet all writers find difference. See her Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages , 2 and passim. Particularly useful is her chap. 3, "Academic Questions: Female and Male in Scholastic Medicine and Natural Philosophy."

14. On this mind-body duality of Adam and Eve, and Eve's association with the sensual, see P. Allen, The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution, 750 B.C.-A.D. 1250 , Montreal and London, 1985, passim, who summarizes succinctly Augustine's complexly contradictory views regarding males and females (218-36); A. K. Hieatt, "Eve as Reason in a Tradition of Allegorical Interpretations of the Fall," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 43 (1980): 221-26; Ruether, "Misogynism and Virginal Feminism," 150-83; and E. Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent , New York, 1988, 64-65, 113-14, and passim.

15. M. M. McLaughlin, "Peter Abelard and the Dignity of Women: Twelfth-Century 'Feminism' in Theory and Practice," in Pierre Abélard, Pierre le Vénérable. Les courants philosophiques, littéraires et artistiques en occident au milieu du XIIe siècle (Colloques internationaux du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Cluny, 1972) , Paris, 1975, 306; and Allen, The Concept of Woman , 271-92.

16. E. C. McLaughlin, "Equality of Souls, Inequality of Sexes: Woman in Medieval Theology," in Religion and Sexism , ed. R. R. Ruether, New York, 1974, 217-19. In addition to summarizing Aquinas's views on males and females, Allen ( The Concept of Woman , 385-407) treats a number of other important writers of the later Middle Ages, including Hildegard of Bingen and Albertus Magnus.

17. Brunetto Latino, in his Livres dou tresor , quoted in the unsigned introduction to Equally in God's Image , ed. J. B. Holloway, C. S. Wright, and J. Bechtold, New York, 1990, 4.

18. See below the discussion of Eve Plucking the Fruit and Tempting Adam regarding the common interpretation that Eve seduced Adam.

19. Demus, Mosaics of San Marco , 1:4, 66, and 244 n. 323. A commemorative mosaic was added over the Treasury door in c. 1235 (see Demus, 2:56 and pl. 101). D. Pincus, "Christian Relics and the Body Politic: A Thirteenth-Century Relief Plaque in the Church of San Marco," in Interpretazioni veneziane. Studi di storia dell'arte in onore di Michelangelo Muraro , ed. D. Rosand, Venice, 1984, 39-57, discusses the circumstances surrounding the fire and subsequent miracle.

20. Tree of Jesse images were widespread by the mid-twelfth century in Europe and drew on the popular association between the Latin virgo and virga . See, for example, Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art , 1:15-22, and O'Reilly, Studies in the Iconography of the Virtues and Vices , 359-61.

21. A. Katzenellenbogen, Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in Medieval, Art , New York, 1964, 63-68, discusses these, as does O'Reilly in her chap. 8. Attention to this theme at San Marco is further evidenced by the addition to its facade of reliefs of the Virtues in the thirteenth century (Demus, Mosaics of San Marco , 1:267).

22. J. Beck, "Genesis, Sexual Antagonism, and the Defective Couple of the Twelfth-Century Jeu d'Adam," Representations 29 (1990): 124 and 128, has an interesting discussion of similar reversals of cause and effect in the Jeu d'Adam , a twelfth-century religious play of the Fall.

23. Schreiner, "Eve, the Mother of History," 142-47, discusses this section of De Genesi ad litteram . Augustine insists that the souls were not gendered until given bodies in Gen. 2, implying an equality, yet, as noted above, his discussion of the male and female souls clearly identifies Eve's as inferior.

24. D. Markow, "The Iconography of the Soul in Medieval Art," Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1985, 34-42, in an intelligent and persuasive discussion of this group of cycles, reidentifies the scene, noting that earlier scholars had sometimes misidentified these as the Separation of Light and Darkness of Day One of Creation. The group includes six Western church cycles (the nave frescoes at San Paolo fuori le mura, Rome, c. 700, known through seventeenth-century drawings [Fig. 17]; frescoes in the Lateran Palace, Rome, first quarter twelfth century; frescoes at San Pietro in Ferentillo from the late twelfth century; at San Giovanni a Porta Latina from 1191-98; mosaics in the Baptistry, Florence, probably produced during the 1270s [Plate 10]; and the upper nave wall frescoes attributed to Jacopo Torriti in the Upper Church of San Francesco, Assisi, ca. 1290 [Plate 9]), two Umbrian-Roman illustrated twelfth-century Bibles (Vat. pal. lat. 3, fol. 5, and Perugia, Communale L. 59), and a thirteenth-century processional cross (San Giovanni Laterano, Treasury).

25. The three other frescoes that show her turning away include those at the Lateran Palace, at Assisi (Plate 9), and at San Giovanni a Porta Latina.

26. Summa theologica pt. I, q. 92. Questions regarding the nature and acquisition of Eve's soul relative to animals' and to Adam's souls were discussed by many medieval theologians. According to some, because Adam's flesh was already animate when his rib was removed, Eve had a rational soul from her first moment, but, as noted above in chap. 3 n. 14, it was judged inferior to Adam's.

27. See pt. I, q. 92 of Aquinas's Summa theologica and the discussion of it in E. C. McLaughlin, "Equality of Souls, Inequality of Sexes," especially 217-19. Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Woman , 3, discusses Aristotle's four categories of contraries relative to medieval and renaissance understandings of male and female. In many instances, from legal writings to medical texts, females were understood to be deprived (and therefore defective) versions of the male, as darkness is a state of being deprived of light.

28. D. Wolfthal, "'A Hue and a Cry': Medieval Rape Imagery and Its Transformation," Art Bulletin 75 (1993): 41-42, discusses the gesture of wrist holding as one of force and control. God similarly holds Adam during the scene of the forming and when he introduces him into Eden.

29. Summa theologica pt. 1, q. 92, art. 2.

30. Schreiner, "Eve, the Mother of History," 155, so paraphrases Augustine. Leo Steinberg offers his most recent views on Michelangelo's hand gesture for Eve in "The Line of Fate," Critical Inquiry 6 (1980): 439-43. He suggests that Eve's stiff middle finger, which points at her own pudendum, designates her "receptive womb" (440), and he links this to her concupiscence with Adam, her future motherhood, and the role of woman's womb in salvation. The "finger addresses that port of sin which, by grace of that other Eve, becomes the gate of redemption" (441). Augustine, posing the question of why Eve was created, reasons in the following way in De Genesi ad litteram 9.5.9 (quoted and discussed in Schreiner, 153): certainly she was not there to help him till the soil, since a male would be far preferable; similarly, she was not as "agreeable for companionship and conversation" as a male would be. Thus, he concludes, she is there "as a helper in begetting children." Schreiner, 155-59, summarizes Augustine's view of the origins of human and angelic history.

31. Beck discusses similar ideas in his analysis of the Jeu d'Adam .