Eve Jugendstil After Conrad Meit

Eve after Conrad Meit.
Bronze, patinated and gilded. 
Germany. 
Late 19th century. 
h. 32 cm (40.5 cm with base).

A Jugendstil statue in patinated and gilded bronze after the Eve in Gotha's Schloßmuseum, carved in boxwood by Conrad Meit around 1510, with a Adam as a counterpart. 

With these two sculptures, Conrad Meit created one of the first proper representations of Adam and Eve in German art, less than ten years after Albrecht Dürer's Adam and Eve. 

These statuettes were probably sculpted by Conrad Meit in Wittenberg around 1510, while working at the court of Frederick the Wise in the studio of Lucas Cranach the Elder. In 1817, during the reign of August von Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg, both pieces were acquired to be exhibited in the Kunstkammer of the Castle of Gotha. 

This gilt and patinated bronze Eve is of the same craft and style as a gilt and patinated bronze Aphrodite Pselioumene, which, instead of Adam, was to be its counterpart. The probable date of production of the Aphrodite, at the end of the 19th century, as well as both Eve's and Aphrodite's style, in dark bronze enhanced with gold, seem to follow the polychromatic trend Franz von Stuck and Max Klinger. Both were cast, without a doubt, before 1925, due to the history of the Aphrodite's mould's history, and they were in all likelihood created in the last years of the 19th century.