Fox With Two Herons

Frans Snyders

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A close collaborator with Rubens, Snyders was a leading animal painter of his time and one of the first to represent Aesop's "Fables" on a large scale. This drawing is preparatory for an oil of about 1630-1640 that is now in the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester. The artist has freely combined elements from two fables: "The Fox and the Heron (or the stork)" and "The Frogs Who Asked for a King." The first story tells how the heron repays the fox's lack of hospitality by serving him a meal in a long-necked bottle from which he cannot eat. In the second, the frogs pester Zeus with repeated requests for a ruler and are given in succession a log, an eel and, finally, a heron. The last ruler gobbles them up one by one. The respective morals are "one bad turn deserves another" and "better no king than a bad one."

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art