The Eve # 13

This is the Eve of Temptation. She is no longer the innocent girl in the cool garden; she is the woman who has tasted the fruit and known Adam. "The Eve # 13" captures the fleeting, blinding moment of erotic awakening. There is no guilt here, no conscience, no foresight of the exile to come—only the sweet, poignant trembling of pleasure.

Her pose is one of absolute surrender to the senses. She stretches not towards the heavens, but into the depth of her own feeling. It is a state of being that the Austrian master of psychology, Stefan Zweig, often explored in his prose—the intensity of a single moment that outweighs a lifetime of reason. As the sentiment often found in his novellas suggests:

"It was one of those moments that are not measured by time, but by depth. In this second, she did not belong to the world, nor to the future; she belonged only to the burning pulse of her own blood."

The Artist carved this form to show that before the Fall, there was Ecstasy. She is caught in the beautiful, dangerous interval between the Bite and the Punishment.