The Creation of Eve

Palma Giovane’s style embodies late Mannerism in Venice. Countless, his paintings carry on Tintoretto’s difficult synthesis of painterly values and complex design with an automatic ease, reemergent naturalism, and self-conscious reference to earlier 16th-century examples, Titian in particular. Ceaseless as both pre-paratory activity and exercise, his draftsmanship is similarly predicated upon lin-ear procedure and rhythmic organization, but ultimately unconcerned with structure and instead dedicated to momentary optical properties. Inspired by a lost scene in Tintoretto’s celebrated History of Adam and Eve for the Scuola della Trinità, rendered in Palma’s most frequent technique, and especially vibrant despite a conspicuous loss, this is an excellent example.