Adam and Eve — Johann Theodor de Bry, c. 1590

Adam and Eve is a hand-colored engraving by Johann Theodor de Bry, produced around 1590 and published within A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia.

The image presents the biblical figures frontally beneath a fruit-bearing tree, their bodies rendered with anatomical clarity and balanced posture. A serpent coils upward through the center of the composition, visually linking the figures along a shared vertical axis. The surrounding terrain is articulated with animals, foliage, and distant activity, constructed with the same descriptive precision applied to the human forms. Executed in engraved line and hand-applied color, the work reflects de Bry’s broader visual practice of recording bodies and environments through comparative observation.