The big fish eat the small ones

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The big fish eat the small ones (Pieter Bruegel the Elder)
The big fish eat the small ones
Pieter Bruegel the Elder , 1556
Pen and brush in gray and black
21.6 x 30.7 cm
Albertina graphic collection

The big fish eat the small ones is a pen and brush drawing by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in the Albertina Graphic Collection (1556).

Content and execution

From an elevated point of view, the viewer looks at a coastal landscape with an island in front of it. There is a huge fish on the bank that is being cut up by two people. From the open mouth and the cut side, fish and other marine animals with again smaller animals in their mouths. Even mussels try to catch fish. In the water, a fish devours a fish while being eaten itself, and on the bank, an angler uses a small fish as bait for a large one. The catch is hung up to dry on a tree at the top right in front of a hut and in front of it a hybrid of fish and humans can be seen. In a boat moored on the bank, in the foreground, a father shows his son this scene. Another man in the boat is pulling out his catch and is also uncovering a fish.

The heavily foxed pen and brush drawing is signed on the lower right edge with “1556 brueghel”. The place of storage is the Graphic Collection Albertina, inventory number 7875. The dimensions are 21.6 × 30.7 cm.

interpretation

The motif of "eating and being eaten" is consistently implemented, but the simultaneous depiction makes it seem ghostly and absurd. The giant knife with which the fish is sliced ​​is engraved with an orb as a symbol of the world. Although the man with a trident standing on a ladder seems to be one of the last predators, a flying fish with its mouth wide open comes towards him. The mixed creature of fish and human on the right edge of the picture indicates that human action is presented here in an exemplary and moralizing way, as is also the case in animal fables. The father shows the son a world in which the stronger lives at the expense of the weaker.

Copper engravings made on the basis of this drawing are provided with two explanatory inscriptions on the lower margin: the Latin title GRANDIBVS EXIGVI SVNT PISCES PISCIBVS ESCA and the verbatim speech of the father: Siet sone dit hebbe ick zeer langhe gheweten / dat die groote vissen de cleyne eten (German about : See my son, I have known this for a long time - that the big one devours the little one ). On these engravings, however, Hieronymus Bosch is indicated as the author instead of Bruegel (“Hieronymus Bos. Inventor”).

Despite the many motifs coming directly from Bosch, the consistent implementation of the pictorial idea speaks for the more rational Bruegel. The Metropolitan Museum of Art - which owns some of the engravings - also lists him as the originator of the template. It is no longer possible to clarify whether Bruegel was working after a lost original Boschs, or simply choosing a better-selling name.

  • Reversed engraving in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

  • Signature and date

  • The imperial orb

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The drawing on albertina.at (accessed on September 8, 2017).
  2. ↑ a b c Konrad Oberhuber: Between Renaissance and Baroque: the age of Bruegel and Bellange. Vienna 1967, p. 52 f.
  3. ^ Christian Vöhringer: Pieter Bruegel. 1525 / 30-1569 hfullmann 2007, ISBN 978-3-8331-3852-2 , p. 6.
  4. ↑ Engraver: Pieter van der Heyden , editor: Hieronymus Cock (metmuseum.org: Big Fish Eat Little Fish , accessed on March 20, 2018)
  5. ^ Translation based on Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Ä. around 1525–1569 - farmers, fools and demons Taschen Verlag 1999, ISBN 3-8228-6590-7 , p. 22.
  6. ↑ metmuseum.org: Big Fish Eat Little Fish , accessed March 20, 2018

Web links

Commons : The big fish eat the small ones  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files