One more battle for Norton Simon’s ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Can you imagine the Norton Simon Museum without this sexy couple?

She is a beguiling Eve with corkscrew curls and an earful of bad advice from a wily serpent. He is a befuddled Adam who holds forbidden fruit in one hand and scratches his head with the other.

Life-size and all but nude, they have been standing under the Biblical tree of knowledge--on the brink of original sin--since German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder painted them nearly 500 years ago. And they are a big reason art lovers go to the museum in Pasadena.

But a legal battle has threatened to remove the monumental oil-on-wood paintings, purchased by the museum’s founder in 1971 for $800,000 and currently valued at $24 million. Whether or not the challenge is successful, it adds yet another chapter to the complicated history of a pair of artworks twice confiscated from private collections--by Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution and Nazis in World War II.

To read the story in Saturday’s Calendar, click here.

-- Suzanne Muchnic

Related coverage:

Appeals court overturns Holocaust looted-art law, but Norton Simon suit continues