Adam

Bourdelle designed this athletic figure in 1889. The sculpture, which shows Adam after the sin, brings to mind lessons from Michelangelesque art, especially the Ignudi on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The tight framing of the figure, while accentuating the muscular power and guilt of the biblical figure, also offers us a glimpse of the artists’ residence in the background, with its old studios stacked on top of one other, like a beehive. Unusually, Adam is positioned in a garden, with a profusion of plants. Is it the Garden of Eden? Or Paradise Lost?

Colin Lemoine