The first shows the Creation of Woman;--we have seen before why she is
made thus prominent in the Dance. The composition is crowded with the
denizens of the earth, the air, and the water; the sun, the moon, and
the stars all appear; the four winds of heaven issue from the laboring
cheeks of figures that impersonate them. The Creator, in the form of
an aged man in royal robes, and wearing the imperial crown, lifts Eve
bodily from the side of the sleeping Adam.
The second represents the Temptation. Eve reclines upon the ground, and
shows Adam the fruit which she has plucked. Adam stands grasping the
tree with his left hand, and raises his right to gather for himself. The
serpent, who looks down upon Eve, has the face and body of a woman. The
forms in this group are fine; Adam's is remarkable for its symmetry and
grace; but Eve's face is ignoble. Indeed, Holbein, like Rembrandt, seems
to have been incapable of an idea of female beauty.
In the third we see the Expulsion from Paradise; and here the Dance
begins. Our guilty parents fly before the flaming sword,--poor Eve
cowering, and her hair streaming in a wavy flood upon the wind; and
before them, but unseen, Death leaps and curvets to the sound of a
vielle or rote,--an old musical stringed instrument,--which he has hung
about his neck.
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