Fabel van een boer en zijn honden

The farmer stands centrally, raising a heavy wooden staff as he looks down at a dead cow and several sheep. In the foreground, two large hounds slink away with their heads turned back toward their master, while a pig and the interior of a barn are visible in the background. The print captures a moment of grim desperation and the breakdown of the domestic hierarchy during a famine.

This work belongs to a series of animal fables that served as moralizing emblems in the Renaissance, translating the Bestiary tradition into a study of human ethics. As court engraver to Rudolf II in Prague, Sadeler's work represents the intersection of natural history and the emblematic worldview prevalent in the intellectual circles of the late Renaissance.