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Original fileFabel van de luipaard en de haas
About This Work
A large, spotted leopard emerges from behind a thick tree trunk on the left, fixing its gaze on a hare positioned behind a wooden enclosure. The etching displays high detail in the leopard's patterned fur and the dense foliage of the forest background. The composition highlights the tension between predator and prey within a structured, man-made boundary in nature.
Aegidius Sadeler served as the court engraver to Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, a major center for late Renaissance hermeticism and natural philosophy. This print belongs to a series of animal fables that reflect the Rudolfine interest in the 'theatrum mundi,' where the natural world was studied both as a scientific curiosity and as a source of moral and philosophical allegory.
Connected Texts
Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder
Sadeler's animal prints are part of a tradition of moralized natural history established by Gheeraerts' 'Warachtige fabulen der dieren'.
Rudolf II
As court engraver, Sadeler's work was central to the Emperor's project of cataloging the natural world as a reflection of divine order.
Provenance & Source
Object
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
paper
height 96 mm x width 112 mm
emblem
Linked Data
AI AI-cataloged fields generated by gemini-3-flash-preview on April 2, 2026. Getty identifiers are AI-inferred and may require verification.