Big Fish Eat Little Fish
Medium
Etching and engraving in black on ivory laid paper, laid down on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 21.7 × 29.9 cm (8 9/16 × 11 13/16 in.); Plate: 23 × 30 cm (9 1/16 × 11 13/16 in.); Sheet: 22.9 × 30.1 cm (9 1/16 × 11 7/8 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
233437
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
This engraving hauntingly illustrates the proverb that the big fish always eats the little fish. Starting with the larger-than-life fish at its center, the image teems with grotesque activity, as bodies spill out of other bodies and hybrid creatures walk and fly about. Pieter Bruegel seems to take a dim view of humanity here, one of disgust at its seemingly endless capacity to cannibalize itself. This is epitomized in the hybrid fish-person at left carrying off its prize, another fish, in its ga...