Eve

In 1504, the artist was nominated by Frederic III the Wise, Elector of Saxony, as the official painter at the court in Wittenberg where he established his studio, and which operated there for the next fifty years. Cranach, a friend of Martin Luther, laid the foundations of Protestant iconography. This painting was initially a part of a life-size representation of Adam and Eve captured in the scene of committing the original sin, but in the early 17th century two half-size figures were cut out from the canvas and repainted as allegorical portraits of a local burgher couple. The originals painted by Cranach were eventually revealed under the painted-over layers in the early 1930s.