Eve

Basaiti Marco

(Venice c. 1470 - after 1530)

The panel, a pendant of Adam (inv. 129), was part of the collection of Scipione Borghese. A few fragmentary letters in the cartouche on the trunk next to the figure of Eve – no longer visible today – appear to indicate the name ‘Zambellin’, a name by which the famous painter Giovanni Bellini was also known [Giambellino]. However, during the reorganisation in 1925, the two panels were ascribed to a pupil of Bellini, Marco Basaiti, an attribution later accepted by the critics. There are clear references to the engravings, drawings and paintings depicting the same characters by the great German artist Albrecht Dürer before, during and immediately after his second stay in Venice (1505-1507).

Object details

Commentary

This painting and its pendant, Adam, are documented as being in Scipione Borghese’s collection from the inventory of around 1633, in which there appears: ‘Two long paintings on panel, one with Adam, and the other with Eve nude, gilded frame, and walnut, 5 3/4 high, 3 1/2 wide, Gio. Bollino’. They were also mentioned with an attribution to Giovanni Bellini in Manilli’s guide (1650, p. 85) and in other 17th- and 18th-century inventories. An exception was the 1693 listing, in which the painting of Eve was ascribed to Lucas van Leyden, while Adam retained the previous attribution. As of this date the two panels were documented as being in the ‘Room of the Venuses’ in Palazzo Borghese in Campo Marzio, where they were still to be found in 1833, when the famous fideicommissary list was drawn up. In it, the panel with Eve is unattributed and, perhaps not surprisingly, the subject is confused with Venus, while the scene with Adam can possibly be identified with a portrait mentioned shortly after in the same room, also by an unknown author. 

In this painting Eve is depicted completely nude, standing and almost life-size. She directs her gaze towards the forbidden fruit, which she has just plucked and holds in her left hand, raised towards the tree beside her. In the background are tree trunks and a patch of sky. In the bottom right-hand corner, a cartouche nailed to a trunk bears an inscription that is no longer legible. However, in the early 20th century it was interpreted as ‘Zambellin fecit’.

Già Venturi (1893, p. 97) associated the pair of paintings with Dürer motifs from 1504 and 1507, which had moderate success in both German and Venetian painting circles, to which the two Borghese panels can clearly be traced. In 1925, with the reorganisation of the Galleria Borghese by the then director Giulio Cantalamessa, the two panels were attributed to Marco Basaiti, a Venetian painter and pupil of Giovanni Bellini. This attribution was accepted by later critics with the exception of Berenson (1957, I, p. 122) who put forward the name of Alessandro Oliverio (c.1500-1544) and Heinemann (1962, p. 305) who tentatively suggested a Flemish painter working in Italy.

Pier Ludovico Puddu