Jan Gossaert at the National Gallery, review

The Telegraph
February 21, 2011

"Adam and Eve" (1520)

UNITED KINGDOM--Danish painter, Jan Gossaert’s ability to humanise characters from the Bible and mythology is of a piece with the way he was able to enter imaginatively into the lives of the men, women and children whose portraits he painted.  In his superb Adam and Eve, on loan from the Royal Collection,  Gossaert tells a story that had not been represented in art before. He shows the moment after Adam took his first bite of the apple and it stuck in his throat – his Adam’s apple. Rolling his eyes in panic he puts one finger to his mouth as though trying to gag it out. The source of his misery is the apple, still with his teeth marks, that Eve holds in one hand before taking a bite with her sensuous, greedy mouth. Note how Gossaert pins the blame for man’s downfall on the woman. Entering imaginatively into the story, he humanises these familiar types, giving them individual personalities, like a novelist creating fictional characters. His exhibition at London's National Gallery is entitled, "Jan Gossaert's Renaissance." [link]