Detail of the angel’s red face under magnification (10x). According to the biblical account, after God expelled Adam from Eden, he appointed two high-ranking angels, a pair of cherubim, to guard the gates of Paradise. In medieval art, cherubim, associated with divine knowledge, are generally blue, but this one, armed with a sword, is red, the colour customarily assigned to another type of angel, the seraphim whose name means ‘burning ones’.

Detail of the serpent’s face under magnification (7.5x). In the book of Genesis, the serpent is not described as female, but in his highly influential biblical commentary, the Historia scholastica, Peter Comestor, chancellor of the cathedral school of Notre Dame, Paris (c. 1164), stated that the serpent had ‘the face of a virgin’, and that Eve was inclined to listen to it because ‘like attracts like’. By giving the serpent female characteristics, a male theologian transformed it into a creature that mirrors Eve, and by extension, all women. This misogynistic motif can be seen in images of the Temptation dating from the 12th to the 17th century.