jan van eyck and adam's apple

Jan van Eyck and Adam's AppleAuthor(s): James SnyderSource: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Dec., 1976), pp. 511-515Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3049564 .

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Jan van Eyck and Adam's Apple* James Snyder

And the woman saw that the tree was good to eat, and fair to the eyes, and delightful to behold: and she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave to her husband who did eat. Genesis 3:6

Thus after succumbing to the tempting arguments of the serpent did Eve and Adam eat the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and commit the sin that plunged mankind forever into damnation: Adam nos in mortem praecipi- tat, Eva occidendo obfuit (Fig. 1).1 No other story in the Old Testament has been so many times retold and represented in Christian art. Whereas Adam and Eve were frequently paired with images of the Christ Child and Mary (the New Adam and the New Eve) in various combinations, the depiction of the "Fall" itself from Early Christian art on hardly changed in its essential composition: the original couple were represented either flanking or standing together beside the Tree of Knowl- edge.2 The tree was represented in a variety of ways and the serpent who tempted Eve assumed a number of forms, ranging from the camel-like beast found in middle-Byzantine Octa- teuchs, to enchanting salamanders with human heads (behind Eve in Hugo van der Goes's Vienna panel), to the more traditional snakes.3 The garden setting too has been variously fashioned. Van der Goes spangled his verdant setting with floral symbols, Diirer added beasts representing the four Humors of man about to be unleashed to plague him forever, whereas other artists, such as Michelangelo, preferred to show us a barren and sterile landscape of Eden appropriate for the evil act.4

Of the numerous versions of the theme, one of the most famous and, at the same time, most enigmatic is that on the outer panels of the Ghent Altarpiece by Jan van Eyck. So famous were Van Eyck's two paintings, in fact, that already by the mid-sixteenth century the giant polyptych was referred to as "The Altar of Adam and Eve." And yet, Van Eyck's interpretation is very simple. The protagonists, separated by

three groups of figures across the top of the altarpiece, stand quietly in stone niches and look downward sadly. There is no tree, no serpent, no indication of a garden at all. Still, Van Eyck's version had far-reaching influence in the North and was copied and quoted over and over again, sometimes in the form of outside shutters for triptychs that presented some type of glorification of the Madonna and Child on the interior.6 To be sure, Jan van Eyck's unusual portrayal of the sin of the first parents has invited its share of interpretations and presented some curious questions for art historians: who is really guilty? what are their thoughts? just why are these sinners admitted to the heavenly realm of Mary, God the Father, and John the Baptist in the first place?7

The sin has been committed. They cover themselves with fig leaves in shame as Genesis reports, and they already feel the guilt and the gravity of their action. One small detail has been overlooked by most scholars, and it is a very significant one at that, providing us with more insight into the ingenious work- ings of Jan van Eyck's mind and his mastery of what Panofsky has so aptly described as "disguised symbolism" in his art. What is the unusual fruit that Eve holds before her (Fig. 2)?

Naturally one would assume that the forbidden fruit here is the traditional apple, just as it appears in the vast majority of medieval and Renaissance representations of the Fall. The identification of the forbidden fruit as an apple follows a fairly consistent pattern in the Latin West, although its etymological backgrounds are complex. The Jews, for instance, identified the Tree of Knowledge as an olive, a grape vine, or even sheaves of wheat, since apples apparently were not known in the Near East in biblical times. Greek commentators on Genesis generally identified it with the fig tree, and it sometimes appears that way

* I wish to thank Miss Devon Gaffney of Bryn Mawr College for the initial observation that led to this study.

1 From the restored inscriptions on the lower frames of the Adam and Eve panels of the Ghent Altarpiece (Fig. 1). L. van Puyvelde, Van Eyck: The Holy Lamb, Brussels, 1947, 21, attributed these phrases to Saint Augustine, but no such source is known to me. E. Dahnens, Het Retabel van het Lam Gods (Inventaris van het Kunstpatrimonium van Oostvlaanderen, vi), Ghent, 1965, 63, states only that the quotations are "ascribed" to Augustine. Cf. Lotte Brand Philip, The Ghent Altarpiece and the Art of Jan van Eyck, Princeton, 1971, 60, n. 119. 2 For general studies on the iconography of Adam and Eve see J. Kirschner, Die Darstellung des ersten Menschenpaares in der bildenden Kunst, Stuttgart, 1903; S. Esche, Adam und Eva, Diisseldorf, 1957. Aspects of typology are discussed by J. J. M. Timmers, Symboliek en Iconographie, Roermond- Maaseik, 1947, 430ff.; and especially Ernst Guldan, Eva und Maria, Graz-

K6ln, 1966. L. Reau, Iconographie de l'art chritien, Paris, 1956, II, pt. 1, lists the numerous representations of the entire cycle of events in Eden. 3 For these see K. Weitzmann, "The Illustrations of the Septuagint," No Graven Images-Studies in Art and the Hebrew Bible, ed. J. Gutmann, New York, 1971, 230; R. Koch, "The Salamander in van der Goes' Garden of Eden," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xxviiI, 1965, 323- 326.

4 E. Panofsky, Albrecht Diirer, Princeton, 1945, 84- 87; Craig Harbison, Sym- bols in Transformation -Iconographic Themes at the Time of the Reformation, Princeton, 1969, 16- 20. 5 Dahnens, Het Retabel, 102- 118, for texts referring to the tafele van Adam ende Eva. The Vijd Chapel was sometimes called that of "Adam and Eve." 6 Guldan, Eva und Maria, passim.

r For a summary of various recent interpretations, see especially Philip, Ghent Altarpiece, 54, n. 104, 59, 60, 70, n. 144.



512 THE ART BULLETIN

1 Adam and Eve, Altarpiece of the Lamb. Ghent, St. Bavo (copyright A.C.L.).

in Christian representations.8 Latin authorities, on the other hand, early identified the fruit of the tree as an apple. In mythology the "Apples of Hesperides," the garden considered to be the pagan counterpart of the Earthly Paradise of Eden, provided the answer. The early Latin term Pomum, however, did not specifically refer to "apple" in the modern sense, but to various kinds of fruit produced on trees.9 The etymology of the "apple" as the forbidden fruit for Christian commentators was more securely traced to the Latin Malus (referred to by Vergil as an apple tree), and in the Vulgate text of the Song of Songs it was thus identified: "Under the apple tree (sub arbore malo) I raised thee up: there thy mother was corrupted, there she was deflowered that bore thee" (8:5). Since sub arbore malo was read as either "under the apple tree" or "under the

2 Detail of Figure 1 (copyright A.C.L.)

evil tree" the association with Eve and the forbidden fruit was a most fitting one.'o

But the fruit held by Eve in Van Eyck's panel clearly is no apple. It is small with a rough,thick skin of very bumpy texture encased by a smoother cap. It is yellow in color with shades of green and reddish-brown. Those who have commented on this strange fruit have identified it as a fig, a pomegranate, and a lemon, none of which remotely resembles the other. Carel van Mander devotes a lengthy passage to the enigmatic fruit in his biography of the Van Eycks in Het Schilder-boeck (1604), stating that Eve "does not offer him [Adam] an apple, the fruit that artists usually depict for this subject, but a fresh fig-proof that Jan must have been a learned man. Augustine, and other learned men, maintain that Eve gave a fig to her husband, for

8 Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, II, 1948, 63- 69; Reau, Iconographie, II, pt. 1, 85: "L'Arbre de la Science," and Guldan, Eva und Maria, 108- 116, passim. 9 K. Heisig, "Woher stammt die Vorstellung vom Paradiesapfel?", Zeitschrift

fiir neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, XLIV, 1952-53, 111- 118, for the mythological and medieval textual sources. 10 Guldan, Eva und Maria, "Zur Apfelsymbolik," 108- 116.



ADAM'S APPLE 513

Moses does not name the fruit specifically and states only that they covered their nakedness not with apple tree leaves but with those of the fig." In his biography of Jan van Eyck Van Mander included verses from Lucas de Heere's poem Den Hof en Boomgaard der Poesien (Ghent, 1565) where the author men- tions that "Eve offers a fig" in the Ghent Altarpiece (en wey- ghert Evams raedt, Daer sy hem lieflijk biedt, een Vijgh, haer aen- ghename), but he surely must have known the description of it in Marcus van Vaernewyck's De Historie van Belgis (Ghent, 1568 and 1574, Iv. 47) where the argument over the nature of the fruit held by Eve together with the citation of Augustine is first given (Item in de vyghe die Eva in de hant heeft: want Augustinus gelooft bet dattet een vyge was/die Adam nuttende was dan eenen appell/.

... .).11

Our early Netherlandish authors apparently had never seen a fresh fig since the fruit held by Eve is not one. Although fig leaves are mentioned in Genesis (3:7) as the coverings for the first parents after they became aware of their nakedness, Van Eyck's fruit in no way resembles the green, smooth-skinned fig with its tapered body. More recent identifications are no more convincing. The pomegranate would surely be appropriate for the forbidden fruit of the tree since it symbolizes, among various other things, the bitterness of the Fall followed by the sweetness of Redemption. But the coarse red pomegranate with its hard skin and bulbous shape does not corre- spond with the object held by Eve. The third fruit suggested, the lemon, seems the most likely at first sight. Because of its sour taste, it would be a very proper fruit for the bitterness resulting from Adam and Eve's act, but the skin in Van Eyck's painting appears to be too thick and irregular for what we com- monly call a lemon. In fact, the fruit in Van Eyck's panel is unique in representations of the Fall of Adam and Eve.

This curious fruit can be identified, however, as a distinct citrus variety, and although the original name is no longer a familiar one, it was well known in the fifteenth century and would have been a most appropriate example in Van Eyck's time of the exotic fruit of Paradise that Eve offered her husband: a type of citrus known as the "Adam's Apple." The numerous varieties of the genus Citrus are so closely interrelated that they have been variously identified and often confused in their relatively recent history in Western Europe.12 Certain species were sometimes called Pomum, Malus, or "Apple" in early botanical handbooks and, in fact, the common orange is still called Sinaasappel (Chiriese apple) in Dutch. Oranges, con-

sidered a most exotic fruit in the fifteenth century, were brought to Europe from western and southern Asia by Arab tribes and were first cultivated in Spain and Portugal by Moslems as they moved into Europe. The Azores, where some of the finest varieties are cultivated, was considered by some early Latin writers as the very site of the Garden of the Hesperides, famed for the "Golden Apples" in ancient mythology.'" One legend credits Saint Dominic with planting the first "Christian" orange trees in the garden of the monastery of S. Sabina in Rome in the year 1200. At any rate, famed orange gardens, such as those of the Generalife in the Alhambra in Granada, were well known by the fifteenth century, and from Spain and the Levant the cultivation of the exotic fruit spread through Italy and into southern France.

It should be noted before going further that Jan van Eyck had been on important diplomatic missions to Portugal and Spain before he added orange trees, date palms, and other varieties of the southern climes in his image of Paradise in the lower panels of the Ghent polyptych, flora especially prominent in the right panels beneath the figure of Eve. Van Mander even made special note of the "many foreign trees in the landscape on the double doors."14 In 1428-29 he was a member of an elite embassy sent by Philip the Good to the King of Portugal. There Van Eyck painted a portrait of the Princess Isabella, prospec- tive bride of the Duke.'15 Van Eyck also made a pilgrimage with other Burgundians to the famed church of Santiago de Compostela. From there his company traveled through Castile and then down to Andalusia where they were received by the nobility including Mohammed, the King of Granada.16 The panels with the hermits and the pilgrims on the right, where Saint James the Great, Santiago, appears directly behind the giant Christopher, display definite Mediterranean landscapes in contrast to the two panels on the left, and the distant view of a city directly over the head of Saint James might well refer to the famed Galician pilgrimage site, Santiago de Compostela. But more important is the fact that Eve holds a very specific type of citrus associated with Iberia, and, as mentioned above, one that was identified as an "Adam's Apple."

The edition of 1732 of Grosses vollstdndiges Universal Lexicon (Halle and Leipzig, Vol. I, col. 452) has a lengthy description of this fruit that unquestionably stems from much earlier sources. It lists the etymology of "Adam's Apple" as Adams-Apffel, Paradiesz-Apffel, Malus Adami, Pomum Adami, Malus Assyria, Malus Limonia, Pomme d'Adam, and further

" For these texts see Dahnens, Het Retabel, 105, 114. In more recent studies of the Ghent Altarpiece, the fruit has been called a lemon (Puyvelde, Van Eyck, 21, and L. Baldass, Jan van Eyck, London and New York, 1952, 48), and a pomegranate (C. Cuttler, Northern Painting from Pucelle to Bruegel, New York, 1968, 94). Dahnens, 63, simply states that Eve holds an exotic fruit. 12 Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed,, 1911, xx, 148ff. See also Risso and Poiteau, Histoire et culture des orangers, Paris, 1872; H. Hume, Citrus Fruits and Their Culture, New York, 1907. "3 Heisig, Zeitschrift fiir neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, 111ff.

14 Het Schilder-boeck, Amsterdam, 1618, 124r. 15 K. Bauch, "Bildnisse des Jan van Eyck," Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1961/62, 96ff. 16 The journey is well documented in the diary-see W. H. J. Weale, Hubert and John van Eyck, London and New York, 1908, lv-lxxii. The anonymous narrative is found in Brussels, State Archives, Registre 132 de la Chambre des Comptes, fols. clvij-clxvj.



514 THE ART BULLETIN

3 The Fall. Chantilly, Mus6e Cond6, Ms 28, fol. 3v 4 Pomi di Adamo in Pietro Andrea Mattioli, commentary on Dioscorides, Della materia medicinale, Venice, 1712, 172

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5 Pomum Adami Rheginum, in Giovanni Battista Ferrari, Hesperides sive de malorum aureorum cultura ... , Rome, 1646, 311r.

informs us that this exotic variety grows in Spain, Portugal, and Italy, and was long associated with the fruit given by Eve to Adam. The definition of the "Adam's Apple" as the projec- tion in the neck of males formed by the cartilage of the larynx, the modern usage of the term, is next discussed. The "apple" in man's (Adam's) throat stemmed from the popular belief that the forbidden fruit stuck in Adam's throat when he tried to swallow it. This legend, which had a different origin and development, is illustrated very early in Christian art in Spain and in later French Gothic manuscripts (Fig. 3) where Adam clutches his throat in representation of the Fall.17

The earliest descriptions and illustrations of the citrine Adam's Apple are found in herbals of the sixteenth century. The Pomum Adami or Adams6pffel is discussed in the New Kreiiterbuch written by the Italian physician and botanist Pietro Andrea Mattioli and published in Prague in 1563 with handsome woodcuts by Giorgio Liberale and Wolfgang Meyer- peck (p. 91) and in subsequent Venetian editions of Mattioli's extended commentaries on Dioscorides' Della materia medicinale (1565 ed., p. 249; 1712 ed., p. 172; Fig. 4).18 In John Gerard's Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes, published in London in 1597, we are informed (p. 1278) that the Pomum Assyrium or

6 Pomum Adami, in Giovanni Battista Ferrari, Hesperides sive de malorum aureorum cultura ..., Rome, 1646, 313r.

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17 For examples in Spanish Romanesque art see Pedro de Palol and M. Hirmer, Early Medieval Art in Spain, New York, n.d., 153, fig. 146; J. Gudiol, Die Kunst kataloniens, Vienna, 1937, pi. xxIII, fig. 39; Marquis de Lozoya, Historia del arte hispanico, Barcelona, 1931, I, 477, fig. 583; and Juan Ainaud, Romanesque Painting, New York, 1963, figs. 115, 130. The interesting 15th-century miniature of the Fall (fig. 3) in the Chantilly manuscript (Musee Conde, Ms 28, fol. 3v.) is published in M. Meiss, The Limbourgs and Their Contemporaries (French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry), plate vol., New York, 1974, fig. 803. I thank Diane and Charles Scillia for bringing several of these examples to my attention.

is The same woodcuts were used in the editions of Mattioli of Prague, 1563 and Venice, 1565. The cut in the edition of 1712 differs only slightly. In a hand-tinted edition of Mattioli's Dioscorides of 1565 in the Canaday Library of Bryn Mawr College, the Poma Adami are painted yellow with orange and darker orange-brown shadings.



ADAM'S APPLE 515

"Adam's Apple" was a species of this orange with thick, rough, pale-yellow skin that is sharp in the taste like a lemon. Gerard further relates that the name is derived from the Latin Pomum Adami which was thought "to be the same Apple, of which Adam did eate in Paradise when he transgressed Gods commandment, whereupon also the prints of the bitting ap- peere therein as they said. .. ."

Perhaps the finest illustrations of the Adam's Apple (in three varieties) are those in Giovanni Battista Ferrari's Hesperides sive de malorum aureorum cultura . . . ,published

in Rome in 1646, with elegant engravings attributed to Cornelis Bloe- mart (Figs. 5, 6).19 Ferrari's discussion of the Pomum Adami, included with his observations on the other fruits of the Garden of Hesperides, puts aside a number of myths concerning its origins and value, but for the fifteenth century, the Apple of Adam must have been an attractive novelty in Europe. Since Jan van Eyck had traveled to Spain and Portugal, he un- doubtedly knew the curious fruit, and he placed it in the hand of Eve in the Ghent Altarpiece. What more appropriate fruit could there be for the Fall? It is at one and the same time an apple, a citrus, and an exotic fruit of the Garden of Paradise. It was the very Apple of Adam.

Bryn Mawr College

19 I thank Bernard Reilly of the Philadelphia Book Company for this reference and Ellen Konowitz for checking references in other botanical treatises. Barbara Teichert informs me that a modern relative of the Adam's Apple is the so-called "Ugly" fruit.



jan van eyck and adam's apple

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