After the Fall
In Adam and Eve Covering Their Nakedness (Fig. 21), Adam appears first in the scene, but no longer in the imago dei . A sinner, his likeness to God is syntactically negated by his backward posture; he reaches into the fig tree for leaves, exactly echoing the figure of Eve plucking the fig in the previous
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Figure 21.
Adam and Eve Covering Their Nakedness, detail of the
Creation cupola, San Marco, Venice.
scene. Eve's posture is contorted; her head turns back toward Adam, her torso twists toward the succeeding scene, and one leg crosses over the other. This leg posture, common for Eve figures in medieval and renaissance art, is a visual simile for the Serpent winding around the Tree of Knowledge. It signifies the carnal/sexual nature of the sin inside her and will reappear in the figure of Potiphar's wife, the seductress in the Joseph story (Fig. 22). When God comes looking for Eve and Adam in the following scene, Adam and Eve Hiding from God (Fig. 23), her legs again overlap—unlike those of any other standing figure in the cupola—and her serpentine arms crisscross her twisted torso. Adam, also agitated, runs from the dignified and still static Creator. Having acquired divine knowledge, they are at this moment most like God, yet their twisted and bent postures here and in the successive scenes appear most ungodlike and reveal the enormity of their sin.[21] Adam's completely altered posture, aligned now with Eve's instead of God's, reveals immediately his state of sin. God calls
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Figure 22.
Potiphar Making Joseph Overseer, detail of the
second Joseph cupola, San Marco, Venice.
to Adam, his right hand raised in speech; Adam's reply comes similarly via his right hand. Insulting the Deity, the deceptive Eve, hiding but not speaking, raises her left hand toward him.
According to the Vulgate text, the Denial of Guilt (Fig. 24) immediately follows the speeches of God and Adam in the previous scene; however, the mosaicists deny the scene absolute proximity by seating God on an elaborate throne and changing the setting to the very center of Eden, where the Trees of Life and Knowledge grow. Although Adam and Eve are both still retrograde, Adam stands closer to the Tree of Life and God, suggesting once again that he is the more redeemable of the two first parents. The Tree of Knowledge reappears as a slim, erect blue tree, associated with the Serpent, Eve, and Darkness, and grows appropriately next to the Tree of Life, behind the throne of God, where it is protected from further encroachment by the first couple. The Serpent is omitted, although it traditionally appears in images of this scene, and art historians have remarked
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Figure 23.
Adam and Eve Hiding from God, detail of the Creation
cupola, San Marco, Venice.
its absence here. However, the San Marco mosaicists in this matter ally themselves with the Vulgate tradition, as reiterated and explained by writers like Comestor, rather than with some popular treatments of the narrative from the later Middle Ages that added an episode of God's interrogating the Serpent. Comestor's well-known view held that the Serpent was not questioned because he was only the agent of Lucifer, not Lucifer himself; we recall that the Serpent was present at God's blessing above (see Plate 5).[22]
The Vulgate text, beginning with the episode of Adam and Eve hiding, consists entirely of conversations, and the mosaicists represent each of these by appropriately postured figures in three successive images. The complexity of these closely spaced episodes warrants a careful look at the correspondence of words and images. In Adam and Eve Hiding (Fig. 23), God's right hand signals his one speech to Adam, asking where he is (dixit , Gen. 3:9b), while Adam's right hand indicates his answer (ait , 3:10). Eve
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Figure 24.
Denial of Guilt, detail of the Creation cupola, San Marco, Venice.
does not speak, but raises her left hand. In the Denial of Guilt (Fig. 24), all three actors gesture with right hands, and these gestures denote, respectively, God's asking Adam if he has eaten of the Tree (dixit , 3:11), Adam's reply that the woman gave him the fruit (dixit , 3:12), God's questioning of Eve (dixit , 3:13a, returning us to the Creator figure a second time), and finally Eve's reply that the Serpent deceived her (respondit , 3:13b). God immediately speaks to punish the wrongdoers in the Punishment of the Serpent, Eve, and Adam (Fig. 25). With raised right hand, he first curses the Serpent (ait , 3:14–15), then punishes Eve (dixit , 3:16), and finally Adam (dixit , 3:17–19).
Thus, in the Denial, God asks only Adam and Eve, not the Serpent, about what they have done, and both answer, though Adam still uses the godlike dixit and Eve the more passive respondit . Eve in the Vulgate does reply that the Serpent tempted her, but here the Latin text above the mosaic, again part of an invented text not derived from the Vulgate, ignores
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Figure 25.
Punishment of the Serpent, Eve, and Adam, detail of the Creation
cupola, San Marco, Venice.
the Serpent's role in her disobedience: "HIC DOMINVS INCREPAT ADAM IPSE MONSTRAT VXOREM FVISSE CAVSAM " ("Here the Lord rebukes Adam who himself shows that his wife was the cause"). In this version of the famous "passing the buck" scene, altered from the Cotton Genesis model by omitting the guilty Serpent, Adam speaks and points to Eve, laying the blame squarely on her.[23] Only her speech gesture—and, if viewers remembered, the corresponding Vulgate text—would attribute guilt to the Serpent, for visually Eve accepts her responsibility by not pointing elsewhere.[24] Her profiled face, contrasting with God's and Adam's, implies her guilt, and of course the mosaicists had prepared the viewers for her culpability since her creation. God's enthronement like a presiding judge, another detail altered from the fifth-century model, confirms the gravity of the moment and emphasizes the theme of accusation, trial, and judgment. His static, stately position contrasts with the submissively bent and agitated poses of Adam and Eve, visually reassuring us of his eternal divinity even at this moment,
when in the J text he appears less than omnipotent.[25] An eschatological passage from the Vita Adae et Evae may have provided a source for the mosaicists, for there, as soon as Adam eats, Eve relates:
And in the same hour, we heard the archangel Michael sounding his trumpet, calling the angels, saying, "Thus says the Lord, 'Come with me into Paradise and hear the sentence which I pronounce on Adam.'" And as we heard the archangel sounding the trumpet, we said, "Behold, God is coming into Paradise to judge us." ... And the throne of God was made ready where the tree of life was.[26]
The specification of locale—the middle of the Garden where both the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge are—further corresponds with the San Marco mosaic.
The Serpent, out of its tree with head lowered, reappears only in the Punishment of the Serpent, Eve, and Adam (Fig. 25), where it appears first in the scene, for God addresses it immediately following Eve's explanation in the previous episode. In a frontal, symmetrical composition reminiscent of a Last Judgment,[27] the centrally enthroned God gestures with his right hand, with Adam kneeling to his right and Eve to his left. As in the preceding scene, God's gesture represents a series of speeches, hierarchically addressed first to the lowly Serpent, then to Eve, and finally to Adam. But although both the text and the composition are hierarchically composed, the two, oddly, do not absolutely correspond. The lowliest of the characters, the Serpent more logically would be placed at the picture's left, lower than Eve. However, its unusual position—even farther to the picture's right than Adam himself—momentarily maintains the fast pace of the narrative, where the Serpent is the object of God's first curse, and its distance from Eve reflects the enmity God puts between the woman and the Serpent; at least its lowered head demonstrates its inferiority. Adam and Eve, now both static and in profile, remain appropriately displayed, Adam on the more honored and Eve on the more sinister side. The Latin text confirms that the artists knew the Serpent was cursed first, for it states, "HIC DOMINVS MALEDICIT SERPENTI CVM ADAM ET EVA ANTE SE EXISTENTIBVS " (Here the Lord curses the Serpent with Adam and Eve appearing before him).
In the following, very rarely depicted scene, God dresses Adam and Eve (Fig. 26), and the rigid, symmetrical composition retains the stern mood
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Figure 26.
God Dresssing Adam and Eve, detail of the Creation cupola,
San Marco, Venice.
of judgment established in the previous two episodes. God helps the still-profiled Eve with her garment as the already clothed Adam looks on, and the episode possibly refers to the early Christian notion that when God clothed Adam and Eve, they received their newly mortal corporeality.[28] Although in the next scene her clothing is identical to Adam's and easily covers her legs, here it exposes them. Bared legs were a sign of sexuality, and possibly the newly knowledgeable Adam's down-tilted head indicates his corporeal interest in Eve's naked limbs.[29]
The Expulsion and the Labors of Adam and Eve (see Plate 2)occupy the final frame of the lowest register of the cupola. The two episodes move easily from the viewer's left to right and reestablish the movement of the narrative after the more static preceding images. The first half of the frame is crowded, including initially the Tree of Life with a cross in its branches, two phoenixes, and a flaming sword below, followed by the erect figure of the Creator with two hands on Adam's shoulder pushing him and Eve out
the portal of Paradise. As in the scene of Eve's creation, the Tree of Life is a type for the Cross of Christ, for the Crucifixion will be the cure for the sin that led to Expulsion. As noted above, the reference to the wood of the Cross is probably also inspired by San Marco's own relic of the True Cross in its Treasury. The phoenixes represent the resurrected Christ and here are red, the color at San Marco associated with enlightenment and the good angels, who did not fall. They are, indeed, enlightened, for according to Jewish legend, Eve offered to share the forbidden fruit with all the animals, but only the phoenixes refused and so were allowed to stay in Paradise.[30]
The popular Vita Adae et Evae may again be a source for the mosaicists, in this case for a reordering of elements from the Cotton Genesis. Weitzmann and Kessler reconstruct the Cotton Genesis manuscript with a scene following the Expulsion and prior to the Labors of Adam and Eve of a cherub (or cherubim) outside Eden guarding the way back to the Tree of Life with a flaming sword, as described in Genesis 3:23–24.[31] San Marco, on the other hand, includes the flaming sword first in the scene below the Tree of Life and links the Tree to the Crucifixion and Resurrection, all in accordance with the text of the Vita . There, before Adam is expelled from Eden, the Lord warns him:
"You shall not now take from it [the Tree of Life]; for it was appointed to the cherubim and the flaming sword which turns to guard it because of you, that you might not taste of it and be immortal forever.... [But] if you guard yourself from all evil, preferring death to it, at the time of the resurrection I will raise you again, and then there shall be given to you from the tree of life, and you shall be immortal forever."[32]
Eve and Adam stand erect in the Expulsion and appear more dignified than in previous scenes, but both are in profile and make large gestures with their prominent left hands toward their new, extraparadisal environment. Their right hands hold the tools of their mundane trades, a mattock for Adam and a spindle and distaff for Eve. Eve looks back eagerly at Adam, showing him the world with which the Middle Ages associated her, the earthly realm. Her eagerness and gesture ironically echo those of the Creator in the Introduction of Adam into Paradise (see Figs. 10 and 11), the scene immediately above this one. In that scene God similarly turns and looks back toward Adam as he pulls him into the Eden from which he now expels the pair.
Eve's and Adam's bodies, covered by matching animal skins, stand closer together than in any other scene and appear identical. While they began their relationship as opposites, Eve representing the difference that heightened Adam's perfection, their shared sin finally unites them. Once again the viewer is reminded of apocalyptic imagery, specifically Judgment scenes, with damned souls pushed into the jaws of Hell. Here, though, God himself propels them toward the picture's lower left, the traditional location of Hell in Judgment images.[33] The cherubim, who in the Genesis text guard the way back to the Tree of Life, appear in the pendentives below the cupola, defending the cupola itself from violation by the descendants of Adam and Eve, depicted in the mosaics of the adjacent lunettes and barrel vault; one is located immediately below the portal itself (see Fig. 11). They also guard the Tree and the Garden from us, the viewers standing in the earthly realm below.