Arm of Eve (1507): Art, History and Details

Arm of Eve (1507) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Arm of Eve is the only surviving preparatory drawing for Dürer’s life-size panels of Adam and Eve in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. It is also one of the few surviving drawings by the artist made on Venetian blue paper, a support he began to use for his chiaroscuro studies while visiting Venice in the winter of 1506–7. With extraordinary economy of means, using only black and gray ink and a limited amount of wash and gouache for shading and heightening, Dürer suggested the grace and balance of the complete human form in this composition of a disembodied arm and hand. Such a study of a hand in ideal proportions cannot help but suggest the hand of the artist, a self-referential nod to his own abilities.

Object facts

• Title: Arm of Eve
• Date: 1507
• Creator attribution: Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528)
• Culture: Germany, Nuremberg
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: point of brush and gray and black wash, brush and gray and black wash, heightened with white gouache
• Dimensions: Sheet: 34.4 x 26.7 cm (13 9/16 x 10 1/2 in.)
• Collection: DR - German
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1965.470

A detail from the museum

The blue paper that Dürer used to make this drawing was a specialty of Venetian paper makers in the 16th century, who achieved the color by infusing the paper pulp with dyed fibers.

Collection credit

Gift of Alan Kennedy

Further reading listed by the museum

• Heller, Joseph. Das leben und die werke Albrecht Dürer's. Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1831.
• Ephrussi, Charles. Albert Dürer et ses dessins. Paris: A. Quantin, 1882.
• Lippmann, Friedrich, Joseph Meder, Jos Schönbrunner, and Friedrich Winkler. Zeichnungen von Albrecht Dürer. Berlin: G. Grote, 1883-1929.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.