The Creation of Eve

This is an “update” of Michelangelo’s fresco of the same name. I often do “updates” of Old Master paintings which I fear might be missed by modern eyes. Every generation sees in a new way just as artists’ styles evolve to reflect the ethos of their generation—it’s a symbiotic relationship.

Here, I borrow Michelangelo’s poses, render them in an Expressionistic style, compress the surrounding space and intensify his now faded palette for the purpose of better reaching, visually, viewers of my generation who have been conditioned by Modernism and the advertising media to more readily “see” to a painting like this.

Thematically, in Genesis 2:18-25 God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep. Eve is called forth from Adam’s rib and captured at the moment when she meets God face to face for the first time, alone, without the slumbering Adam— her reaction is one of praise and adoration as she recognizes God as her Father and Creator.

Next, the scripture says, God brought Eve to Adam, who was apparently awake by this time, and presented her to him. His reaction was poetic and evidently conditioned by his exhausting job of naming all the animals God had created, not finding even one that was a suitable mate:

This is at last bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

She shall be called woman,

for she was taken out of me.

Without their companionship which included God they could not fully realize their humanity. The three pronged tree branch reaching out from the tree trunk at far left alludes to this tripartite relationship which God intended from the beginning.