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Lot Essay
Pieter Bruegel worked very closely with Pieter van der Heyden and other engravers, and the publisher Hieronymus Cock, on the translation of his works into the print medium. He made very detailed preparatory drawings for his prints, a considerable number of which have survived. The model drawing for this print, carefully executed in pen, brush and ink and dated 1556, is at the Albertina, Vienna (inv. no. 78755).
The composition illustrates a proverb, very popular during Bruegel's time and still as poignant today as it was back then: small fish get eaten by big fish. The moral of the image however seems to be that even the biggest fish one day get eaten and that - no matter how big and strong they become - they will eventually meet their end like any other.
Bruegel illustrates this universal tale in a most entertaining and grotesque way, although the print falsely proclaims Hieronymus Bosch as the inventor of this image - probably a marketing trick by the astute publisher Hieronymous Cock in Antwerp, who was the 'biggest fish' of print-publishing in the Low Countries at the time.
The composition illustrates a proverb, very popular during Bruegel's time and still as poignant today as it was back then: small fish get eaten by big fish. The moral of the image however seems to be that even the biggest fish one day get eaten and that - no matter how big and strong they become - they will eventually meet their end like any other.
Bruegel illustrates this universal tale in a most entertaining and grotesque way, although the print falsely proclaims Hieronymus Bosch as the inventor of this image - probably a marketing trick by the astute publisher Hieronymous Cock in Antwerp, who was the 'biggest fish' of print-publishing in the Low Countries at the time.