PIETER VAN DER HEYDEN (CIRCA 1530-1572) AFTER PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER (1525-1569)

The following four plates come from the series The Seven Deadly Sins, which, together with The Seven Virtues and the Large Landscapes, can be considered the pinnacle of Bruegel's graphic production. Remarkably, the artist's highly detailed preparatory drawings for the first two series have survived, dispersed over some of the most important public and private graphic collections in Europe. In their accuracy, the drawings were clearly created for the purpose of serving as models for the prints, and were very faithfully engraved onto the plates by Pieter van der Heyden (the present series of the Vices) and Philips Galle (the Virtues). For the production of these and other prints, both engravers were employed by the workshop of Hieronymus Cock, publisher and enlightened enterpreneur in Antwerp. Cock's commercial acumen might have played an important role in the conception of these series. Bruegel's work and iconography is largely based on medieval traditions and consciously inspired by Hieronymus Bosch's imagery (a form of aemulatio), which was still admired and highly popular with a wide audience. The Deadly Sins present us with fanciful depictions of Hell, full of bizarre anecdotal details fragmented over various spatial planes, and imbued with tragic-comic humour, as the sinners are taunted and tormented by demonic creatures and involved in grotesque acts, corresponding to the sin they represent.
The series, undoubtedly a great commercial success at the time, still remains a fantastic - and fantastically amusing - visual experience today.

The preparatory drawing for the present print, in pen and grey-brown ink, 1557, is in the Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, Paris (inv. no. 4659).