# Adam and Eve
> Workshop of Giovanni della Robbia - ca. 1515 (genuine core); ca. 1870 or before (added sections)
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> Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-03
## Tombstone
- **Artist:** Workshop of Giovanni della Robbia
- **Date:** ca. 1515 (genuine core); ca. 1870 or before (added sections)
- **Medium:** Glazed terracotta (two distinct terracotta bodies and glazing campaigns; see technical notes)
- **Dimensions:** 279.5 x 212 cm (110 1/16 x 83 7/16 in.)
- **Object type:** Ceramic
- **Period:** Italian Renaissance, with a documented nineteenth-century reconstruction campaign
- **Current location:** The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland
- **Attribution:** accepted
## Summary
A monumental glazed terracotta relief of Adam and Eve, long catalogued as workshop of Giovanni della Robbia, ca. 1515, and on continuous public display at the Walters Art Museum since 1909. In 2013 accidental damage triggered a conservation study that used x-ray fluorescence spectrometry on the glaze itself, and found that a substantial proportion of the object was not made in the Renaissance at all: it was fabricated, probably in Florence around 1870, and physically spliced onto surviving genuine fragments using techniques borrowed from both maiolica painting and marble restoration.The reconstruction was caught almost immediately by a South Kensington Museum examiner in 1870, whose damning written report sat unread in a London archive for a century and a half while the relief was sold in Florence, exported to Paris, auctioned at the 1902 Lelong sale, and bought by Henry Walters. It is not an isolated case: a comparable della Robbia retable in the Louvre carries a documented nineteenth-century restoration from the same market moment, when genuine but damaged Della Robbia terracotta was routinely completed for sale rather than sold as fragments.The Walters' own current catalogue entry now discloses the fabrication candidly. Unresolved: who actually made the additions, what the original monument looked like before it was reduced to fragments, and what Henry Walters paid for it in 1902.
## Provenance
Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it.
- **ca. 1515** Unknown original setting `[unknown]` (origin)
The genuine sixteenth-century core is associated, by its inscription and by the coats of arms of Leo X, the Salviati, and the Buondelmonti on its predella, with the triumphal entry of the Medici pope Leo X into Florence on 30 November 1515 -- a connection first proposed by Allan Marquand (1911, 1912, 1920). The Walters' own catalogue entry states this specific commission cannot be substantiated. No contract, commission record, or account of the monument's original architectural setting survives.
- **-by 1870** Unidentified restorer(s), Italy `[documented]` (reconstruction and fabrication)
X-ray fluorescence glaze analysis and archival research establish that surviving fragments of the genuine sixteenth-century monument were reassembled and completed with newly fabricated glazed terracotta, probably in Italy in 1870 or slightly before. The craftsman or workshop responsible has not been identified.
- **December 1870-March 1871** Offered to the South Kensington Museum, London (via the dealer recorded as "V. Cappelli") `[documented]` (offer of sale, declined)
Shipped to London and offered for GBP 1,000. Technical examiner Matthew Digby Wyatt filed a report identifying much of the object as recent fabrication disguised to look old; the museum declined to purchase, and the relief was returned to Florence in March 1871. Also described in The Art Journal (London), January-February 1871.
- **by 1884-1886** Shop of the antiques dealer Angelo Cappelli, Borgo Ognissanti, Florence `[documented]` (dealer stock)
In the shop of Florentine antiques dealer Angelo Cappelli by 1884 at the latest.
- **1886** Adele Ristori, Valdarno `[documented]` (purchase)
Purchased from Angelo Cappelli's shop by Adele Ristori, described in the sources consulted only as a woman from the Valdarno region of Tuscany.
- **1886-1902** Mme Camille Lelong, Paris `[documented]` (purchase and export)
Purchased from Adele Ristori in 1886; its export from Italy to France that year took place despite an effort by Italian authorities to bar it, the legal basis and outcome of which are not detailed in the sources consulted.
- **8-10 December 1902-1902** Sold at the Lelong Collection Sale ("Premiere vente"), Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, lot 98 `[documented]` (posthumous auction sale)
The printed sale catalogue reproduces an image of the relief showing it already damaged and grimy, with the predella inscription transcribed in a configuration different from its current reading and explicitly described in the catalogue as incomplete. Hammer price not recorded in any source consulted.
- **1902-1931** Henry Walters, Baltimore `[documented]` (purchase)
Purchased by Henry Walters at the 1902 Lelong sale. Installed on permanent public display in 1909, when Walters completed his private art gallery in Baltimore, the building that is now the Walters Art Museum. The relief has remained on continuous display since, on a stair landing on Charles Street.
- **1931-present** The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore `[documented]` (bequest)
Entered the museum's collection by the bequest of Henry Walters on his death in 1931. Accession number 27.219.
## Open questions
- Who physically made the nineteenth-century glazed terracotta additions? Bailey's research names the Florentine dealers who bought and sold the completed object but explicitly could not identify the restorer or workshop responsible for fabricating the new sections.
- What did the original, complete sixteenth-century monument look like, and for what architectural or devotional setting was it made? The restorers are described as having produced a reduced version of the original from an incomplete set of surviving fragments, implying a larger or more elaborate original whose full form is now lost.
- What price did Henry Walters pay for lot 98 at the December 1902 Lelong sale? Not published in any source consulted for this record.
- Is the dealer recorded only as 'V. Cappelli' in the Victoria and Albert Museum's 1870 correspondence the same person as, or a relation of, Angelo Cappelli, who is documented holding the relief in his Borgo Ognissanti shop in Florence by 1884? Independent research located a Vincenzo Cappelli trading at the same Florentine street in the early 1880s, but no source consulted confirms this identification; it is recorded here as a plausible but unproven lead.
- What was the precise legal mechanism by which Italian authorities attempted, unsuccessfully, to block the relief's export to France in 1886? The literature records the attempt but not its legal basis or why it failed.
- Can the fig-leaf fragment lost in the 2013 damage incident still be recovered? It was never located despite a thorough search, and the fill made to replace it was designed to be reversible in case it eventually turns up.
- Does the Walters' physical gallery label on the stair landing disclose the nineteenth-century reconstruction to an in-person visitor as explicitly as the museum's own online catalogue entry now does? Not established by the sources available for this record.
## Sources
- [1] Bailey, Gregory. 2018. "The Nineteenth-Century Reconstruction of Giovanni Della Robbia's Adam and Eve." Journal of the Walters Art Museum 73: 70-76.
- [2] Bailey, Gregory. "Tempting Fate: Treatment of Giovanni della Robbia's Adam and Eve." AIC Objects Specialty Group Postprints, Volume 24 (papers of 2017, published 2019): 77-90.
- [3] The Walters Art Museum, online collection catalogue. "Adam and Eve," Giovanni della Robbia, ca. 1515, accession 27.219.
- [4] Musee du Louvre, collections database. "L'Ascension," workshop of Andrea della Robbia (with Giovanni della Robbia, ?).
- [5] The Art Newspaper. 1994. "Master faker Alfred Andre's cache of evidence revealed."
- [6] Wikimedia Commons. File information and extmetadata for File:Workshop of Giovanni della Robbia - Adam and Eve - Walters 27219 - Front Installation.jpg, confirming Public Domain licence status.
- [7] The Walters Art Museum, online collection catalogue. "Adam and Eve (Temptation)," German, 1520-1560, accession 27.325. Consulted for disambiguation only; not the object described in this record.
- [8] Wikipedia, "Giovanni della Robbia." Tertiary source, used only for uncontested biographical dates and lineage; flagged for replacement with Marquand's monographs or a current scholarly catalogue.
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