René-François-Auguste Rodin, Eve (after the fall), 1899

Rodin involves the viewer in his depiction of Eve's shame before God, using Eve's complete figure to display both her inner thoughts and immediate reactions to the Divine presence surrounding her. Rodin first carved Eve after the Fall in marble between 1883 and 1886, with eleven subsequent marble samples. Rodin had intended that it be placed in front of the Gates of Hell, his longest-running project, across from Adam, a composition that surfaced only posthumously. Stripped of these accompanying sculptures and setting, however, she has become simply Eve.

Rodin strove to recreate the movement, natural gestures, and soft flesh of his models in the typically static medium of marble. As a result, Eve's form possesses a gentle fertility that Rodin witnessed in the changing physique of his model, Madame Abruzzezi, whom Rodin later discovered to be pregnant. Rodin even called Eve "unfinished" because he was not able to continue shaping Eve truthfully to Abruzzezi's growing form.

Rodin relied on the natural forms of his models rather than seek to idealize their figures. Current with the Symbolist movement of the time, he sought to convey the workings of the mind through mere depictions of movement. Rodin's interest in representing emotion with only the surface form of the body is partially due to his long term study of Michelangelo's sculptures and paintings of the human figure.

Eve's forcefully submissive gesture is complete only when seen from all angles. Rodin involves the viewer in the tension of a simultaneous forward movement and surrender backward. From every side, as though in the middle of the scene, Eve's movement expresses a consciousness of the foreboding God who surrounds her. The classically influence bend of the knee and coyly positioned left foot become symbols of Eve's shame and desire to retreat from her fate; Rodin partners these gestures with Eve's hunched posture and her arm's protective shielding of her cast-down face. As Eve reacts to God's imminence, Rodin involves the viewer in her movement and, thereby, in her torment. The struggle of the Eve's contradictory gestures forces the viewer to actively participate-both physically and emotionally-in this "scene" between Eve and God.

Eve was commissioned directly from Rodin by Julia Richardson in 1899. Mrs. Richardson had the opportunity to visit Rodin in Paris several times during that year. Sculptor and patron also maintained a formal correspondence, reminiscing about their visits as well as about the artistry of Eve, one of Rodin's letters to Mrs. Richardson is preserved in the museum's archives.

Blair A. Brooks '02.

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