The Fall of Man [middle panel]

Historical Context

The central Fall of Man panel from Altdorfer's allegorical triptych deploys the Garden of Eden narrative within a forest setting characteristic of the Danube school's distinctive achievement: the transformation of northern European woodland into a vehicle for cosmic and spiritual meaning. Altdorfer's Adam and Eve inhabit a landscape of almost overwhelming botanical specificity, with individual trees, ferns, and undergrowth depicted with a naturalist attention absent from Italian representations of the same subject. The conjunction of theological narrative—the human Fall with its consequences of toil, suffering, and death—with the lush beauty of untouched nature creates an ironic counterpoint that gives the composition its peculiar tension. This panel sits at the center of the triptych's moralizing program linking pagan excess, human sin, and martial violence.

Technical Analysis

The oil on hardboard, transferred from panel, features the dense, luxuriant landscape treatment characteristic of the Danube School. The lush Paradise garden surrounding the figures demonstrates the school's revolutionary attention to nature as a primary element of composition.

Provenance

Professor Wieser, Innsbruck, by 1891.[1] Lacher von Eisack, Bad Tölz, Oberbayern.[2] (Paul Cassirer, Berlin).[3] Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza [1875-1947], Schloss Rohoncz, Hungary, and later, Villa Favorita, Lugano-Castagnola, Switzerland, by 1930;[4] by inheritance to his son, Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza [1921-2002], Villa Favorita; acquired 1950 by (M. Knoedler & Co., New York);[5] purchased February 1951 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[6] gift 1952 to NGA. [1] As per Max Friedländer, _Albrecht Altdorfer, der Maler von Regensburg_, Leipzig, 1891: 56, no. 27. [2] Cited by Rudolf Heinemann, _Stiftung Sammlung Schloss Rohoncz_, Lugano-Castagnola, 1937: 2. [3] Information from annotated copy of _Sammlung Schloss Rohoncz_, Exh. cat. Neue Pinakothek, Munich, 1930, in the possession of Mrs. Walter Feilchenfeldt, Sr., Zurich, per letter of 28 January 1989 to John Hand in the object file (1952.5.31.a-c), NGA curatorial files. Colin Eisler, _Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian_, Oxford, 1977: 35, erroneously listed Walter Feilchenfeldt as owning the picture. [4] _Sammlung Schloss Rohoncz_, Exh. cat. Neue Pinakothek, Munich, 1930: no. 4. [5] M. Knoedler & Co. Records, accession number 2012.M.54, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: Commission book no. 4, p. 143, no. CA 3724; Sales book no. 16, p. 334 (copies in NGA curatorial files). [6] See The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2168.

See It In Person

National Gallery of Art

Washington, D.C., United States

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Albrecht Altdorfer·c. 1535

The Rule of Mars [right panel]