Welcome!
This site invites you to explore the rich artistic tradition surrounding the Fall of Man, with a focus on the Tree of Knowledge and the forbidden fruit. This is a companion website to my book Temptation Transformed: The Story of How the Forbidden Fruit Became an Apple, which examines how the forbidden fruit came to be identified as an apple. Since the Book of Genesis speaks only of a “fruit,” one of the questions Temptation Transformed must answer is where and when the forbidden fruit first appears as an apple. To that end, the book surveys artistic depictions of the forbidden fruit in Western art, from the fourth-century catacombs beneath Rome to the Renaissance—nearly six-hundred images in all. Of course, only a small fraction could be incorporated into the book, so I decided to make the entire image database publicly available online.
Special thanks to the individuals and institutions who made these images accessible, and to Carissa Tsien, who designed and created this website.
Enjoy!
Azzan Yadin-Israel
Professor, Rutgers University