The Sin is an 1893 painting by the German artist Franz von Stuck. Against a nearly black background, a naked woman with long black hair looks straight at the viewer as a huge snake coils around her body and rests its head on her shoulder. She is Eve, and the snake is the serpent of the Garden of Eden.
The picture made Stuck famous when the Munich Secession opened its first exhibition in 1893. He painted about a dozen versions, many in a gilded frame shaped like a temple, and set one at the center of an altar in his studio. Other artists used the same title, but the woman wrapped in a snake is Stuck's.
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What is the story behind The Sin painting?
In 1893, a ring of Munich visitors gathered around a single canvas set on its own easel, a woman and a snake in a heavy gold frame, and its painter would keep coming back to that woman for almost twenty years…
What You'll Discover
What the orange glow behind her shoulder hides
Who is the real danger, the woman or the snake
How a miller's son became Franz von Stuck
Which American city saw The Sin in 1898
How one version passed through Hitler's dealer
Why Stuck gave The Sin its own altar