In Genesis, Adam and Eve are the first man and woman. After disobeying God they were expelled from Paradise into the world as we now know it. In portraits, portrait sculpture, and images of their creation and life before their disobedience, they are normally shown in their naked prelapsarian beauty (example). Eve especially will have long, flowing hair and a shapely body (example). Conversely, images of their condition after the Fall make them look less attractive. Eve's hair will now be either ratty (example) or gathered up in a matronly do (example).
Dress changes, too. Immediately after the Fall they put on fig leaves (as at left, reflecting Genesis 3:7). Then, after the expulsion from Paradise they may be seen in animal skins (example, reflecting Genesis 3:21) or garbed as working peasants, as in a relief on the cathedral in Modena, their work reflecting God's judgment in Genesis 3:17-19.
Adam is also involved in the iconography of the Crucifixion and Resurrection. The Revelation of Moses (cached), a Jewish work probably of the first century, has God tell Adam, "if thou shalt keep thyself from all evil, as being destined to die, I will again raise thee up when the resurrection comes, and then there shall be given thee of the tree of life, and thou shalt be free from death for ever." For Christians, Adam's raising-up "when the resurrection comes" is portrayed in Harrowing of Hell images, where Adam and Eve are the first to be taken from the underworld by the resurrected Christ.
And to illustrate that the Cross is the "tree of life" that frees Adam from death, images of the Crucifixion sometimes put Adam in a sarcophagus at the foot of the cross (example). At least five of the 13th- and 14th-century processional crosses in Zadar's Benedictine Convent Museum have Adam actually lifting the lid to exit the sarcophagus, and one from the 15th shows him standing in flames at the foot of the cross, awaiting the salvation to come. In later work from Zadar the coffin image at the foot of the cross is replaced by what Petricioli calls “the skull of Adam” inside a circular design somewhat like an abstract bloom of a flower.1 In a missal illumination of the 13th century, Adam is sitting up in the sarcophagus, holding a chalice to collect the blood dripping from Christ's body.
Scripture further explains the relationship of Adam to Christ in such texts as Romans 5:12-21 (cached), which calls Adam "the type of the one to come" and 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, "By a man came death, and by a man the resurrection of the dead. And as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive."
Feast day:
According to Caxton, the scriptural account of Adam and Eve was "read in the church" on Septuagesima Sunday.
Sources:
The scriptural source for the creation of Adam and Eve is Genesis 2:4-25 (cached). For their fall, it is Genesis 3:1-24 (cached). The stories of Adam, Eve, and their sons are also found in a chapter of Caxton's expansion of the Golden Legend (html or pdf), though these are not in Voragine's original.
At left, catacombs painting from the 4th century
Other images:
Early Christian sarcophagus (Expulsion,
animal skins)
The
Adam and Eve reliefs of the west façade of
the Duomo in Orvieto
Prelapsarian Adam
and Eve flanking the doors of the
Cathedral of St. Lawrence, TrogirTypology:
Irenaeus of Lyons on why Adam "should first
partake in that salvation offered to all by Christ": Adversus
Haereses III, xxiii (cached)
John Chrysostom on Romans 5:12ff: Homily X on the Epistle to the Romans (cached)
John Chrysostom on Romans 5:12ff: Homily X on the Epistle to the Romans (cached)
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1See Ivo Petricioli, Exposition Permanente d’Art Sacré à Zadar. Tr. Marie Rose Škifić. Zadar: Stalna izložba crkvene umjetnosti, 2004.