Essay #74: The Family of Adam and Eve (Moses 6:1–12)
Pictured on his deathbed, Adam is supported by Eve and surrounded by a daughter and two sons. In the background, Seth converses with an angel. The scene of the Death of Adam is part of a cycle of frescoes in the church of San Francesco in Arezzo, Italy illustrating the Legend of the True Cross. In this cycle, the classical forms of the quattrocento appear against a “sparse, often surrealist landscape—the pictorial equivalent of silence. To the modern eye, Piero’s paintings show a subdued emotion, where rational theory appears to have overwhelmed naturalism.”...
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