Lilith Pictures: with Adam and Eve

Note in each of the following pictures, that the serpent tempting Eve has a woman's head at least, often a female torso as well. I suspect that this is connected to the Lilith myth, but in some different (Christian?) flavor. If this is the case, I am not sure what is the relationship between the Christian and Jewish Liliths, since the Christian depictions do not seem to represent the known Jewish folktale. This motif is extremely widespread late Medieval and Renaissance art. This is just a smattering of those images.

Michelangelo was simply drawing on iconographic tradition which was well established by his time, but prior to the late medieval period all representations of the serpent are simply snakes. The development of the feminine form is odd to say the least. Keep in mind that this is Christian iconography and long before the late middle ages it was firmly established in Christian tradition that the serpent was the Devil -- unambiguously male.

But it is also true that there is an underlying current of misogyny, or at least gynophobia in medieval Christianity. Women were identified with temptation and hence with sin. It is not hard to imagine a shift in symbolism in which the cause for the fall of the first couple becomes doubly female, but this explanation for the artistic tradition would be much more plausible if it had a mythical underpinning. Lilith would, of course, fit in nicely here. Unfortunately, however, although Lilith is enjoying a renaissance in kabalistic Judaism during this period, it is very unclear to what extent this could have trickled into popular Christianity. In any case, there are no texts that I know of that support the proposition that late medieval and renaissance Christians had stories about Lilith.

By 'very unclear' above, though, I mean just that. Popular culture doesn't always come to us in texts, and it may well be that there were Christian versions of a Lilith myth which survive only in iconography. I think, from the iconography itself, that it is safe to say that this myth was not the Alphabet of ben Sira version, but it could be argued to resemble the serpent-Lilith of Kabbalah. The one place of potential contact here is in alchemical speculation, where we do see some cross fertilization of ideas coming into Christian thought from Jewish mysticism.

Iconographically, there are a few medieval pictures I know of that portray faeries with a woman's torso and a snake's body, but they are not connected with the Adam and Eve material at all.