Pieter van der HEYDEN (c. 1530 - after 1572) after Pieter BRUEGEL THE ELDER (c. 1525 - 1569) : Desidia [Sloth] - 1558

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Engraving, 227 x 293 mm. New Hollstein (Bruegel) 22.

Plate from the Seven Deadly Sins series.

Superb impression of the only state printed on watermarked laid paper (gothic P), published by Hieronymus Cock (1518 - 1570).

Excellent condition, good margins all around the platemark (sheet: 250 x 335 mm). Minor soiling to the edges of the margins, central vertical soft fold only slightly visible. Rare in this printing quality and condition.

In the lower margin, the Latin inscription SEGNITIES ROBUR FRANGIT, LONGA OCIA NERVOS can be translated as ‘Indolence breaks vigour, prolonged idleness [breaks] energy’. The spelling ‘ocia’ is probably a clerical error for ‘otia’. The Middle Dutch legend Traecheyt maeckt machtelos en verdroocht / Die seunuwen dat de mensch nieuwers toe en doocht is translated as follows by Maarten Bassens (in Bruegel, The Complete Graphic Works, 2019, p. 147): ‘Sloth makes powerless and dries out the nerves until man is good for nothing’.

“The series of Seven Deadly Sins, completed in 1558, is carried out entirely in the style of Hieronymus Bosch and filled with fantastic figures and landscapes.” According to Jürgen Müller, the reasons for this choice were not just commercial (Hieronymus Bosch's name and style were already very popular). “It seems more probable that Bruegel adopted Bosch’s style because viewers would instantly associate it with the worlds of sin and folly.” And what’s more, this choice “constitutes a definite rejection of the prevailing style of the Italian Renaissance”. (Jürgen Müller in Nadine Orenstein, Pieter Bruegel the Elder: drawings and prints, 2001, p. 145).

All the plates in the series feature a woman personifying one of the seven canonical deadly sins (anger, sloth, pride, avarice, gluttony, envy and lust), surrounded by scenes illustrating each of these sins in different ways, as well as the punishments the sinner must expect.

In Desidia, Sloth, slumped over a donkey, seems to be fast asleep in the middle of a strange landscape that gives an impression of both heaviness and restlessness.

Three giant snails, symbols of sloth and slowness, surround Sloth; behind them, three figures slumped over a table, their heads in their hands, embody idleness and melancholy. A figure hobbles over to pull a man into bed... Imps are busy all over the place, poking some and offering others pillows... Irony, grating or facetious, is omnipresent and, as usual in Bruegel's compositions or those of Bosch, many other details remain difficult to interpret.

Bruegel's preparatory drawing is in the Grafische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna (inv. 7872).