Edouard Dor's Essay Traces Masaccio's Influence on Western Art

Edouard Dor's essay 'Les couilles d'Adam' is a serious study of Masaccio's impact on Western painting. Masaccio's fresco of Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise in the Brancacci Chapel of the Carmine church in Florence was hailed by Élie Faure, Stendhal, Delacroix, and Malraux as the invention of painting. Dor recalls Masaccio's singularity: ending medieval and Greco-Roman idealized body representation, notably giving testicles their proper place. He traces the influence of Masaccio's Adam and Eve on later artists including Michelangelo, Raphael, Rodin, Giacometti (with 'Homme qui marche'), and Picasso (with 'L'Étreinte'). The fresco, once difficult to see in the 1970s, has been restored but is now inaccessible due to mass tourism.