In a panel by Andrea Pisano, in Giotto’s bell tower, we can see Eve as the birth of the rib from a sleeping Adam. A religious absurdity, an intriguing puzzle for a philologist and an alchemist
The biblical verses in Genesis 2:21-22: ” And made Yahweh Elohim fall on the Adam a deep sleep, and he slept, and He took a rib from him and closed the flesh underneath. And formed Yahweh Elohim to the beginning and the end of the rib, which was taken from the Adam into a woman and brought her unto the Adam “, these verses were summarized by the Middle Ages artists with iconographic simplicity and deep hermetic knowledge. In fact, only the artistic masterpieces of this much-undervalued epoch, there could have been showing giving birth of a rib a man. And not two mates already formed, as the later standard Renaissance iconography had.
In the Christian popular religious culture, until a half-century ago, we had been taught from infancy to take this biblical legend literally, as man and woman are bound to get along. While in theological milieus they preferred to take Adam and Eve as symbolical representations of Soul and Body (see St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas). Anyway, the readers accustomed to this site’s credo already know my supposition that Alchemy and Hermetism are the basis of the oldest religious beliefs. In fact, to me, here we are examining, if not an alchemical pair, at least an alchemical process, and we will see how our usual cultural path is being diverted from the ancient hermetic culture.
This peculiar rendering of the Creation of Eve was not a creative solo by Andrea Pisano (1290 – 1348). Still, there are plenty of similar examples among medieval artists, although not so masterly delineated. For instance, below, we can see some representations of the same scene by Wiligelmus di Modena (active between c. 1099 and 1120) and Pacino di Bonaguida (active between c. 1302 and 1343).
Andrea Pisano is known for having contributed to freeing Italian medieval art from Byzantine hieratic stiffness. The formation of his style was said to be due rather to Giotto di Bondone than to his earlier master. Since then, Pisano’s naturalistically rendered human figures could become the primary expressive vehicle of his art. Even, according to some art critics, this feature makes him the forerunner of the Renaissance. But Pisano remains a medieval artist, for both temporal collocation and iconographic themes. In fact, the representation of his Creation of Eve belongs entirely to Middle Ages, not to Renaissance, which would take place only a century after. When Neoplatonism first penetrated deeply into the Venetian cultural fabric, then Florentine. At least officially, Venice has continuously traveled the Aegean sea to Syria and Alexandria of Egypt.
On Andrea Pisano – or Andrea d’Ugolino da Pontedera, as he is also known from his birthplace Pontedera near Pisa, and where his father, ser Ugolino, was a notary in Pisa, hence Pisano – we know enough life details, as Giorgio Vasari includes a biography of him in his “Lives”. So we got informed that Pisano started as a goldsmith – given that in the Florentine documents of the years between 1330 and 1336 it is so defined – and apparently well learned the chiseling art. Among his masters and pupils, we find all the most-known Italian sculptors of his time. He succeeded Giotto as Master of the Works in Piazza del Duomo in Firenze, where, until then, he was already famous for the South Doors of the Baptistery, with panels in bronze and gold.
Pisano may have completed his apprenticeship with the Pistoian goldsmith Andrea di Jacopo d’Ognabene. In fact, in the Sienese goldsmith and sculpture of the early fourteenth century, we find the sources of the conception of the relief by Andrea Pisano, who places his figures on a flat background. It is probable that again through Siena, he also assimilated French influences: the figures are not placed as if balanced on the frame but rest firmly on the ground.
On Giotto’s death (1337), Pisano continued the construction of the bell tower, scrupulously following Giotto’s design. The entire lower third of the bell tower was built according to Giotto’s project: the lower part of the base under the direction of the same between 1334 and 1337, and only the subsequent parts under the direction of Andrea Pisano between 1334 and 1341. He just added a second band (fascia), which he decorated with lozenge-shaped panels, which belong to the piece we are examining.
Indeed, after having assumed the direction of the Opera del Duomo, Andrea Pisano was only rarely able to devote himself to sculpture. Contrary to what the art historians of the last century said, it is not possible that the execution of the fourteenth-century statues and reliefs (altogether fifty-eight, today all kept in the Museum of the Opera of S. Maria del Fiore in Florence), had been entrusted to a single sculptor, that is to Andrea Pisano. So, it is probable that the Opera del Duomo, as a client who had its workshops of different kinds, called several sculptors, independent of each other, to carry out the sculptures at the same time, some of whom could also have had his shop in the city.
But indeed at least twelve of the reliefs are Andrea Pisano’s work: the Creation of Adam, the Creation of Eve, the Work of the progenitors, Jabal, Tubalkain, Equitatio, Lanificium, Daedalus, Navigatio, Hercules, Agricultura, and Sculptura. Furthermore, six other reliefs attributable to his son Nino demonstrate Andrea’s imprint: Iubal, Medicina, Phoroneus, Theatrica, Architectura, and Pictura.
The choice of Phoroneus for one of the personally executed plaques shows that Pisano was not the simpleton goldsmith who limited himself to executing the biblical scenes. Phoroneus is a little-known figure of Greek mythology, when the first kings were surrounded by a semi-divine aura, because they were sons of Nymphs or Oceanines and, in the case of Phoroneus, they also had a river as a father, Inachus, the first king of Argos. A genuinely unusual artistic subject, whether dealing with biblical stories or illustrating arts and crafts, as it was customary at the time to exhibit in the decorations of the most important churches of a European city in the late Middle Ages.
Dante Alighieri had already ranged within the Florentine human knowledge, and now, a few decades after his death, Greek mythology had officially entered the artistic subjects. Thus, here on the bell tower of a Christian church appears Phoroneus, the king who – according to Greek mythology – invented the law. As well as theatre, architecture, medicine, and painting.
To better understand Pisano’s work we must deepen the actual Genesis words, retaking the biblical verses mentioned above and following up the real action till verse 25:
V.1: And made Yahweh Elohim fall on the Adam a deep sleep, and he slept, took a rib from him and closed the flesh underneath.
V.22: And formed Yahweh Elohim to the beginning and the end of the rib, which was taken from the Adam into a woman and brought her unto the Adam.
V.23: And said the Adam, “The beginning and the end of this is now at last bone from my bones, flesh from my flesh. The beginning and end of this shall be called woman, because out of the man the beginning and end of this has been taken.
V.24: Therefore shall a man leave the beginning and end of his father and the beginning and end of his mother and cling to his woman and become into one flesh”.
V.25: And they were both naked and Adam and his woman were not ashamed.
The enigma doesn’t concern only the weird process of Eve’s Creation, but the certain identification of Adam, Eve, man, and woman in the Genesis narrative. We know that, when symbolism is involved, precision is required. As it can be seen, the word Adam, after the first nomination, once again reappears after the surgical operation is completed. It is only at the end when the man (not nominated as Adam) and the woman (not nominated as Eve) become again one flesh that the word Adam reappears in the text. There are two records of the birth of Adam on the 6th day of creation. The first is “And Elohim said, let us make Adam in our image, after our likeness”. The second is: “So Elohim created Adam in His own image, in the image of Elohim created He him, male and female created He them”.
So, Eve was “Adam’s rib”. But why didn’t Yahweh Elohim make a woman from the earth as he had made Adam? An alchemist would replay because one can imagine the composition of the earth which made Adam. But let’s go back to the riddle represented by the rib, as the verses in Genesis 2:21-22 appears to mean precisely the word “rib”. Nevertheless, she was not a surgically removed rib, walking around the garden. Yahweh Elohim then worked the rib into Eve. This has been, and is, a problem also for those who tend to take the creation of Adam and Eve as the origin of the human spreading all over the earth’s surface, and not as simply figurative.