Die Sinnlichkeit (Sensuality)

Franz von Stuck

Signed in pencil and lettered 'STUCK' and 'Die Sinnlichkeit' on plate. This image is based on an oil painting of the same title, done in 1891. The subject appears to the Garden of Eden, with the serpent embracing Eve.

An October 6, 2014 Sotheby's auction note about the von Stuck subject noted: "With the bodies of Eve and the snake entwined, their cool skin in close contact, each empowers the other to brazenly confront the viewer. His representation of Eve as femme fatale could not be more different from the grief stricken and shamed figure depicted in Masaccio’s Expulsion from the Garden but is closer to his peer Max Klinger’s clever rendering of 'Eva und die Zukunft,' 1898, in which the snake holds a mirror for Eve, as if to reveal to her a truer self.... Stuck’s Eve, and by extension Stuck demands that the viewer complicate and question their conception of sin itself."