Adam at the Met

At the Met stands a life-size marble statue of the biblical figure Adam carved by the Italian artist Tullio Lombardo (1455–1532). Adam stands with a serene gaze and relaxed body language, his weight transferred elegantly across his torso and hips. Lombardo appropriated the pose from classical antiquity in order to meet the requirements of the pope who hired him to somehow create a human being beautiful enough to be considered a god incarnate.

Lombardo accomplished this higher-order task with a most subtle compositional effect and with some pretty fancy chiseling. He abraded or irritated the surface of the marble and then polished it until a sublime magical light—literally and allegorically—began to overtake the mass, radiating from inside and reflecting off the outside. Finally the brittle stone is re-perceived (and re-conceived) as flexible matter—matter with the properties of skin, cartilage, musculature, bones—plus an ethereal effervescence.