The fresco is a single scene from the cycle painted around 1425 by Masaccio, Masolino and others on the walls of the Brancacci Chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence.

It depicts the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, from the biblical Book of Genesis chapter 3, albeit with a few differences from the canonical account.

Three centuries after the fresco was painted, Cosimo III de' Medici, in line with contemporary ideas of decorum, ordered that fig leaves be added to conceal the genitals of the figures.

Masaccio's evocation of Eve's howling, deeply felt pain in particular explores the meaning of the expulsion on a previously unexamined, more personal level.

The same tradition is found in Ephrem the Syrian, who, in his Hymns on Paradise 6, talks about Christ clothing the faithful in the robe that Adam lost with the transgression.