The Seven Deadly Sins: Envy

Between 1945 and 1949, Cadmus turned his dexterous hand and fertile imagination to rendering the Seven Deadly Sins, a subject with biblical antecedents that artists have explored since the Middle Ages, including Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Cadmus’s interpretation extends his predilection for social satire to surreal extremes of excess, vulgarity, and gore. Of the series, Cadmus explained, "I don’t appear as myself, but I am all of the Deadly Sins in a way, as you all are, too."

Credit: Gift of Lincoln Kirstein, 1993