Stories in pictures from the world of birds: the courageous magpie

 Stories in pictures from the world of birds: the courageous magpie* Lisanne Wepler The birds are all atwitter; the peacock is decked out in his finest. What does the conceited dandy mean to tell them, and why the flashy demeanor? Cackling and clucking indicate the general confusion that has seized the feathered crowd. They engage in heated debate, differences of opinion arise. One bird dares to confront the peacock: the magpie, known as a chatterbox. Planting its feet firmly on the ground, holding its head up high, it turns toward the show-off. But what is on the agenda of this plenary meeting of the birds? That is what the beholder asks, captivated by the lavish colors and narrative richness of a large painting by Frans Snijders (–) in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel (fig. ). At first glance one recognizes an assembly of birds representing a wide variety of species set in a flat landscape with a gnarly oak in the left half of the picture. A depiction of birds raising what seems to be an uncoordinated and chaotic clamor, the panel would seem to be of a bird concert, in which each bird volunteers its own particular disharmonious notes. Upon closer inspection, though, a principle of order emerges, a structure that governs the whole disarray, indicating another narrative instead of that of the bird concert. The magpie stands on a tree stump * Translated from the German by Gerrit Jackson.  The painting is in such a poor state of preservation that Hella Robels is no longer confident that it is an original Snijders, instead assigning it to his school. I, though, believe, that the technique and innovative subject make it at least possible that it is autograph, so I will not speak of Snijders’s school in this article but of Snijders himself. Cf. H. Robels, Frans Snijders: Stilleben- und Tiermaler –, Munich , p. , and B. Schnackenburg. Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister: Gesamtkatalog,  vols., Mainz , vol. , p. .  The bird concert was a popular subject in Flemish painting. Snijders, his students and successors (Paul de Vos, Johannes Fijt, Jan van Kessel the Elder, Nicasius Bernaerts), and Mel-  Frans Snijders, An assembly of birds (here renamed The courageous magpie). Kassel, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in the center of the painting, and both its position and black-and-white plumage set it apart from the prevailing confusion of colors. It has put one foot forward in the direction of the peacock, to which it turns, its beak open. Its antagonist, standing on a mound of earth, in turn crows at the magpie, displaying his magnificent feathers. Fanning his tail, he attracts our attention with his sheer size and the agitation he conveys. A cock screeches at him from the left, forming a diagonal line of composichior d’Hondecoeter in the Dutch Republic produced many variants of the subject. On concerts in animal painting see A.P. de Mirimonde, “Les concerts parodiques chez les maîtres du nord,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts  (), pp. –, S. Koslow, Frans Snyders, the noble estate: seventeenth-century painting in the southern Netherlands, Antwerp , pp. –, and L. Wepler, “Melchior d’Hondecoeter as storyteller,” in W. de Rooij and B. Meyer-Krahmer (eds.), exhib. cat. Intolerance,  vols., Berlin , vol. , pp. –, esp. –.  Male peafowl fan their tail feathers primarily during the mating season or when threatened in order to impress females or to intimidate antagonists.  tion with the peacock’s head that guides the eye down toward the magpie. The three birds are surrounded by others likewise engaged in heated debate. Several turn to each other with open beaks or shriek at the peacock and the magpie, and some emphasize their excitation by flapping their wings.        Giving prominent positions to the peacock and the magpie assigns them the leading roles in the painting’s hierarchically organized narrative structure. The two birds occupy the center of attention, both in our perception of the painted composition and in our reading of the narrative. We can describe the pair formed by peacock and magpie as a “narrative element,” a term that highlights the narrational character of the two figures in their interaction and expands upon the neutral concept of the “motif” with a view to a dynamic process of reception. In the following, that process will serve as the basis for an analysis of several paintings that have one thing in common: the act of communication between peacock and magpie amid an assembly of birds of many species. This narrative element ultimately led me to identify the subject with a literary model, a fable that Aesop tells as follows. “The Peacock and the Jackdaw. The birds were consulting together on the choice of a king. The peacock demanded to be named king by virtue of his beauty. And the birds were about to vote for him when the jackdaw called out: ‘But if you reign, what help can we expect from you when the eagle comes hunting for us?’” The subject of the Kassel painting has so far been identified only by Robels, who mentions it in a footnote. Although Schnackenburg was aware of the subject, he saw no need to give the painting a title that would refer to the fable. In the catalogue of Snijders’s oeuvre, too, the relation to the fable is considered a possibility rather than a fact: “Peacock and magpie in prominent positions  Aesop, The complete fables, trans. R. and O. Temple, London , p. .  See Robels, op. cit. (note ), p. , note , and Schnackenburg, op. cit. (note ), p. .  Robels, op. cit. (note ), p. : “Pfau und Elster an exponierter Stelle scheinen auf die Äsopische Fabel vom Pfau und der Dohle zu weisen.”  Fig. , for example.  Fig. , for example.  I am preparing a doctoral dissertation at the University of Bonn on this set of issues: “Kunt gy het gekakel van de hoenderen   would seem to point to Aesop’s fable of the peacock and the jackdaw.” But the picture is in fact indisputably based on that fable, which can be identified in the painting’s narrative structure. This analytical approach requires us to pay close attention to the plotlines in the pictures and to embed them in a dynamic narrative, rather than register in additive fashion what a painting depicts: a gathering of birds, say. The content of a painting then reveals itself without the need to make reference to attributes or symbols. Examining the paintings using this method can also help us assign correct titles to pictures that have been described, because of the presence of a variety of species, as bird concerts, or poultry yards, or have gone altogether untitled. A title like The courageous magpie would de-emphasize what may be seen as the primary purport of the fable — the distinction between essential and extraneous qualities in rulers — and instead focus on the moral courage of a smaller and weaker member of the community of birds that makes such a critical distinction possible in the first place.     A study of seventeenth-century bird paintings yields further support for my contention that several of them should be identified with the fable of the magpie and the peacock (or for short, the magpie fable). To begin with, the Kassel painting is an example of large-format animal painting, a genre that Snijders initiated and that made him famous. Other well-known characteristics of his oeuvre are the use of anecdotal elements involving animal characters to enrich his still lifes and his fable illustrations. He drew inspiration for his animal pictures from his collaboration with Peter Paul Rubens, his apprenticeship with Pieter Brueghel the Younger, and his friendship with Jan Brueghel the Elder. One of Snijders’s earliest fable pictures also marks the beginning of large-format fable painting in the s. The genesis of wel beletten? Narration als bedeutungskonstituierendes Element in der Vogelmalerei des niederländischen Barocks.”  In Aesop’s text, the peacock’s interlocutor is a jackdaw. Edwaerd de Dene and Joost van den Vondel, to name the two most influential authors of fable books in the Netherlands, changed it into a magpie.  That painting, Cock and jewel, is in the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen. See Robels, op. cit. (note ), p. . K. Arndt, “De gallo et iaspide: ein Fabelmotiv bei Frans Snijders,” Aachener Kunstblätter  (), pp. –, gives a detailed account of the genesis of the fable of the cock and the jewel. Stories in pictures from the world of birds: the courageous magpie  this genre was favored in the southern Netherlands by a cultural milieu that was particularly receptive to popular stories in pictures outside the depiction of biblical or classical tales. The proverb pictures of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (/–) are only one example. The illustration of proverbs flourished in the seventeenth century as well, as we know from the oeuvres of such painters as Jan Steen, David Teniers the Younger, Jacob Jordaens, Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne and Sebastiaan Vrancx. In addition to narrative painting, the second half of the sixteenth century saw the start of a steadily rising production of fable books. Edwaerd de Dene initiated the trend with his De warachtighe fabulen der dieren (), in which each fable is illustrated with an etching by Marcus Gheeraerts. Producers of fable books continued reusing Gheeraerts’s etchings until well into the eighteenth century, and they were largely responsible for the genre’s popularity. Snijders himself owned two copies of De warachtighe fabulen der dieren, on which he often drew for templates on which to base his fable pictures. It was in this way that he visualized popular cultural materials in imposing tableaux that are no less impressive than those of history painting. Yet he never made direct copies of the etched illustrations. The determining factor in the artistic transposition from fable to painting is the text of the fable itself and the turning point of its narrative.       Gheeraerts’s etchings and de Dene’s texts were widely used well into the eighteenth century, outside the southern Netherlandish language area as well. In the following I will undertake a closer analysis of the magpie fable in de Dene’s De warachtighe fabulen der dieren and several paintings in order to illustrate the interplay between the text, its illustrations and the paintings. All three media present a specific moment in time at which the situation comes to be reconsidered and reassessed. The magpie’s speech can be regarded as the story’s turning point: the magpie criticizes the peacock’s desire to rule over the birds. In the fable books, the moral application is always typographically set off from the text above it. In de Dene’s version of the fable, the birds — the author does not specify which ones — challenge the magpie to take a stand. The illustration shows the cock as the magpie’s interlocutor, to which it turns as the other birds surround the pair on both sides (fig. ). The etching already has the peacock occupying an elevated position, a symbolic indication of his aspiration to the kingship and an instance of a compositional pictorial element turning into a narrative one. A particularly striking feature of the illustration is the fact that only the cock and the magpie communicate with each other. The remaining birds, including the peacock, seem to be listening intently to the  See E. de Jongh, “De spreekwoord beduidt al wat de lezer wil,” Kunstschrift , nr. , pp. –, esp. p. . On the general context of proverbs in Dutch culture see M. van Vaeck, “Vonken van hoogdravende wijsheid: over spreekwoordschilderijen,” Kunstschrift , nr. , pp. –. On these painters see also K. Renger and W.J. Müller (eds.), exhib. cat. Die Sprache der Bilder: Realität und Bedeutung in der niederländischen Malerei des .Jahrhunderts, Braunschweig (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum) . For a bibliographical survey of proverbs in the visual arts see W. Mieder and J. Sobieski, Proverb iconography: an international bibliography, New York .  Etching first became a popular technique in book illustration with Gheeraerts’s fable illustrations; see J. Becker (ed.), Joost van den Vondel, Vorstelijke warande der dieren, Soest , p. .  See the survey of the various fable book editions in C.L. Küster, Illustrierte Aesop-Ausgaben des . und .Jahrhunderts, Hamburg , pp. –; See also U. Bodemann, Katalog illustrierter Fabelausgaben –, Frankfurt & Berlin , and J. Landwehr, Fable-books printed in the Low Countries, Nieuwkoop . The latter are valuable overviews of the output of books of fables in Europe and the Netherlands respectively, with information about the number of copies printed. On Gheeraerts’s successors see P.J. Smith, Embleemfabels in de Nederlanden (–ca. ), Hilversum , and E. Hodnett, Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder of Bruges, London and Antwerp, Utrecht . Fables have been popular since antiquity as a way of interrogating, criticizing, or to use a more neutral term, analogizing human behavior in moralizing and didactic stories about animals. Used in antiquity in schoolbooks and instructional literature, the genre first appeared in vernacular literature in twelfth-century France. After the invention of letterpress printing, the fifteenth century witnessed the emergence of the fable collection as a genre in its own right; see R. Dithmar, Die Fabel: Geschichte — Struktur — Didaktik, Paderborn , p. . Growing steadily from then on, the output of fable books in the seventeenth century was significantly greater in the Netherlands and France than in the German-speaking countries, England, Italy, or Spain; see Bodemann, op. cit., and Landwehr, op. cit.  See Robels, op. cit. (note ), pp.  and –.  The following are some of the sixteenth and seventeenthcentury works in which the magpie fable appears. They all draw on de Dene’s text and either copy Gheeraerts’s etchings or reuse the original copperplates: Esbatement moral des animaux, Antwerp , fable nr. ; Arnoldus Freitag, Mythologia ethica, Antwerp , pp. –; Aegidius Sadeler, Theatrum morum: artliche gesprach der thier, Prague , p. ; and of course Joost van den Vondel, Vorstelijcke warande der dieren, Amsterdam  (ed. princ. Amsterdam ), p. . For information on printers of fable illustrations see Becker, op. cit. (note ).     Marcus Gheeraerts, The peacock and the magpie, in Edwaerd de Dene, De warachtighe fabulen der dieren, Bruges , p.  temporal structure of the narrative. Gheeraerts’s etching shows the moment when the magpie is challenged to express its opinion. Snijders, by contrast, depicts its response, which it now addresses directly to the peacock. The latter, too, seems to be captured in mid-sentence. The cock, though included in the painting as well, now appears in an important supporting role. He stands right between the peacock and the magpie, turning to the former either to express his displeasure or to support the peacock’s endeavor to gain power. The foreground is given over to the magpie’s courage. It alone dares openly to confront the upstart’s claim to power. The magpie fable’s central message — the criticism of the selection of a ruler based on his beauty — is given similarly persuasive form in the illustration and the text. In the text, the magpie responds to the peacock’s presumption at the behest of the birds, conveyed in the illustration by the cock. Speaking in flattering words, it offers the hostility of the eagle as an argument against the peacock’s royal aspirations. The latter’s beautiful feathers are insufficient to protect his fellow birds against the great bird of prey. The moral application of the story, distinguished from the main text by the use of an italic rather than Gothic typeface and an index symbol, concludes with another metaphor hinting at the ways of bad rulers: many a shepherd rents sheep for the sole purpose of shearing them, without caring for their well-being. cock’s or the magpie’s speech. An important difference emerges between the etched and the painted magpie fable. In the painting, the dialogue between the peacock and the magpie is the key event that enables us to identify it with the fable. This difference between the representations of the communicative situation in the illustration and the painting also has consequences for the         ’  The Prado has a painting that resembles the work in Kassel except for a few details. It too is attributed to Frans Snijders (fig. ). The title chosen for it, Bird concert, indicates that the depiction of many birds in interaction has once again been considered without regard for the narrative structure.  Wolfgang Kemp and Götz Pochat have undertaken extensive research on the “pregnant moment” in pictures. See for example G. Pochat, Bild-Zeit: Zeitgestalt und Erzählstruktur in der bildenden Kunst des . und . Jahrhunderts,  vols., Vienna, Cologne & Weimar ; W. Kemp, Die Räume der Maler: zur Bilderzählung seit Giotto, Munich . Back in the late s Peter Parshall had already studied the question of the pregnant moment in Lucas van Leyden; see his “Lucas van Leyden’s narrative style,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek , pp. –.  E. de Dene, De warachtighe fabulen der dieren, Bruges , pp. –.  I am grateful to Dr Ton Harmsen of Leiden University for assisting me with this passage.  According to the Prado website, the painting is dated . Snijders, however, died four years previously, which would call into question either the attribution to him or the veracity of the date. The only reference to the painting that I was able to find is in the Prado’s official Spanish online presentation: http://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/galeria-on-line/ galeria-on-line/obra/concierto-de-aves-/. My thanks to Dr Teresa Posada Kubissa, who confirmed that the painting has not been published elsewhere. Stories in pictures from the world of birds: the courageous magpie   Frans Snijders, Bird concert (here renamed The courageous magpie). Madrid, Prado  Paul de Vos, An assembly of birds (here renamed The courageous magpie). Private collection The landscape setting for the assembly of birds is very similar to that in the Kassel painting, and some motifs appear in both compositions. Conspicuous new elements in the Prado painting include the red macaw sitting on a branch to which a piece of paper with an illegible note has been affixed, as well as the pond with ducks swimming in it in the left foreground. On the other hand, the number of birds in the area immediately around the magpie is smaller. These minor discrepancies aside, the central theme remains the same: the communication between the peacock and the magpie. Another picture (fig. ) based on the same narrative element is the work of a painter from Snijders’s school, Paul de Vos, in which some passages are very close to the Prado composition by his teacher. The most significant alteration concerns the bearing of the peacock, who has now folded his tail feathers. Less solemn and agitated, he appears to be indulging in small talk with the magpie. Several other debaters flutter around the peacock’s head and screech at him. The owlet to the left of and above the peacock’s head holds a piece of paper. The owlet and paper may also be taken as clues indicating a bird concert, for it is a motif that Snijders frequently employed in his scenes of that subject. The other birds, though, are not paying any heed to the nocturnal hunter. He is not in the center of the crowd, trying to conduct their singing. Instead, the other birds are listening attentively to the peacock or to their neighbors. As regard the chronology of the narrative, the representative moment when the peacock presents his grand attire may already be in the past. He has meekly folded his train as the birds criticize him for his arrogance while the magpie continues its argument against his claim to power. A composition by Jan van Kessel the Elder (fig. ) also fits into the strand of the tradition defined by Snijders’s above-mentioned paintings. Van Kessel’s small painting on copper shows few deviations from Snijders’s model. One, though, will prove to be significant for the narrative, for the birds include an eagle looking out at the peacock from behind the gnarly trunk of the tree and participating in the debate. Another picture by Jan van Kessel the Elder can likewise be identified with the magpie fable, even though the peacock is absent, so that the magpie’s words spoken toward the edge of the painting, remain without addressee or relation to the action around it. This picture is a copy, on copper, of a detail of the Kassel Snijders.  I am grateful, again, to Dr Teresa Posada Kubissa, who has taken a close look to make sure that there really is no legible text on the piece of paper.  The Netherlands Institute for Art History () states that the painting is attributed to Paul de Vos and is in a private collection.  Sale Sotheby’s (London),  October , nr. . It is now in a private collection. My thanks to Dr G.J.M.Weber for drawing my attention to this picture.  Jan van Kessel the Elder made numerous copies of Snijders’s depictions of fables and bird concerts on small panel or copper supports. See  afb.nr. , kunstwerknr. .       Snijders’s most prominent successor in the genre of fable compositions is Melchior d’Hondecoeter. The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna has a painting of his titled Poultry yard     Jan van Kessel the Elder, An assembly of birds (here renamed The courageous magpie). Private collection  Melchior d’Hondecoeter, Poultry yard (here renamed The courageous magpie). Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (fig. ) which plays with Snijders’s pictorial ideas (figs.  and ), modifying them in such a way as to generate a distinctive new composition. The parallels between Snijders’s formula and the Vienna painting once again confirm the Flemish artist’s influence on the famous Amsterdam-based bird painter. The narrative element of magpie and peacock is laid out in the familiar reading direction from left to right. Opening its beak, the magpie raises its voice to call the peacock’s election into question. The latter listens calmly, unfolding his imposing tail feathers. In contrast to Snijders’s paintings, the magpie, as the picture’s leading actor, is not singled out from the crowd of birds by being positioned on a tree stump. Only the dialogue in which it is engaged lends it an important narrative function in the composition. Hondecoeter distinctly visualizes the chronological schema of the written fable: whereas the peacock and the magpie in Snijders’s painting “speak” to each other at the same time, failing to listen to or understand one another, Hondecoeter puts words in the garrulous magpie’s beak as the peacock listens to it. In this way, both animals conform to the logic of the fable text, which inevitably narrates the scenes in sequence. The peacock’s closed beak is a conspicuous deviation from other paintings by Hondecoeter featur- ing that bird; most of his peacocks contribute to the general cacophony. Like Snijders, Hondecoeter expands the temporal aspect of the scene. He inserts additional birds in supporting roles who confer with one another or comment on the situation, enabling the viewer to imagine possible scenarios that may have played out before or may yet take place after the magpie’s critical intervention. Birds rushing to the scene, some partly cut off by the edges of the picture, further enrich the painting’s temporal component, adding to the dynamism of the scene. They suggest a frantic sense of urgent business, suddenly bursting into the picture to join the general fray. In a comparison of the paintings in their entirety, Hondecoeter offers the more nuanced translation into painting of the logic of the literary fable. By reducing the number of characters and building a more rigorous compositional structure based on diagonals running from bottom left to top right, Hondecoeter conveys an altogether more tranquil impression of this assembly of many species of birds, even as he depicts dynamic movement and applies dramatic lighting to the scene.   There is yet another painting of this fable which scholars have hitherto failed to recognize;  See K. Demus, Katalog der Gemäldegalerie: Holländische Meister des ., . und . Jahrhunderts, Vienna , p. , and E. Plietzsch, Holländische und flämische Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, Leipzig , p. . Neither author identifies the fable as the subject of the painting.  Further similarities between the paintings by Hon- decoeter and Snijders are apparent in the choice of several species of bird and their placement in the pictorial arrangement. Hondecoeter makes minor changes to the animals’ postures. For example, the cockerel to the left of the peacock, the kingfisher below and the jay on the right appear in the same positions but are captured in different stages of movement. Stories in pictures from the world of birds: the courageous magpie   Peeter Boel, An assembly of birds (here renamed The courageous magpie). Private collection  Jan van Kessel the Younger, An assembly of birds in a landscape (here renamed The courageous magpie). Private collection Fred G. Meijer gives it to Peeter Boel or a collaborator (fig. ). Here the magpie fable is placed in a narrative structure that deviates from the depictions discussed so far. If those pictures conveyed the impression of a chaotic assembly of birds in which the magpie’s special position in the pictorial narrative was recognizable only upon closer inspection, that bird, like the peacock, is now positioned in front of the distant horizon. Talking down at the larger bird, it questions the peacock’s claim to the monarchy. Meanwhile, its main argument is physically present, below and to its right. The eagle, the other birds’ attacker and antagonist, is threatening a gray heron, who fails to be deeply impressed. Like the heron, the animals in general evince a much more serene attitude than in the pictures discussed so far. Puzzled, they seem to be waiting to see the outcome of the calm conversation between the peacock and the magpie; only a few of them hold their own consultations. The cock, who had occupied a prominent position between the peacock and the magpie in Snijders and de Vos, is involved in the action, but Boel’s composition assigns him a subordinate role, quite literally so. This picture, too, exists in a copy on copper by Jan van Kessel the Elder. To date, the subject has been described only with the general title of Birds on a riverbank.       In An assembly of birds in a landscape, a painting by Jan van Kessel the Younger, the magpie and the peacock do not dominate the center of the story (fig. ). Instead, an eagle strikes a commanding pose to attract the attention of the birds and the viewer. It seems that he is eagerly expecting to be crowned with the laurel wreath that floats above his head, held aloft by two birds. Without the art-historical context I have sketched, it would be difficult to recognize in this painting yet another depiction of the magpie  Other works in Boel’s oeuvre support Meijer’s tentative attribution of this painting to him. The eagle, the pair of pheasants and the puffed-up pigeon reappear identically in prints by the artist; see The illustrated Bartsch, in progress, Norwalk (Conn.) –, vol. , pp. –. A painting in the Städel Museum, Frankfurt (inv. nr. ), also corroborates the attribution. It was in the Národní Museum in Prague until , when it was returned to its original owner in accordance with Czech restitution law. I am grateful to Dr Magda Nemcová and Dr Hana Seifertová for sharing this information with me.  Sale Sotheby’s (London),  December , nr. .  Sale Sotheby’s (Amsterdam),  November , nr. . In addition to depicting the act of communication, this version of the magpie fable depicts a rhetorical device, the argument, from the magpie’s speech, strengthening our identification of the subject by adding another narrative element. The compositional program leaves the painter at liberty to populate the painting with other birds in addition to the magpie and the peacock. By embodying the rhetorical device the magpie had used in the aggressive eagle, the painting illustrates the close relationship between the fable’s text and its depiction and adds another level of meaning.      The paintings based on the magpie fable all feature the turning point of its plot: the critical discussion between the magpie and the peacock. On the narrative level, the translation of the magpie fable into painting appears in three different variants. First there is the conversation between peacock and magpie, surrounded by many other birds protesting, commenting on the central scene, or engaging in debates of their own (figs. , , , ). The second pictorial story includes the embodiment of a rhetorical argument advanced by the magpie: the eagle as the menace the birds face (figs. , ). Finally, the third variant presents two scenes that take place in sequence: the magpie’s protest and the birds’ decision to elect the eagle their king, crowning their former enemy (fig. ). The variability of the fable brought to light by my analysis of the texts is a characteristic feature of this literary genre, which enables it to remain topical and even address politically controversial issues in different historical periods and in different social settings while retaining its thematic core. One secondary aspect that is noteworthy in this context is the large format of the paintings under consideration (figs. , , , ). In a genre regarded as largely decorative, such a size can in itself be a vehicle of meaning. In the seventeenth century it was primarily biblical and mythological histories that were executed in large formats. The comparison with history painting is also supported by the narrative potential of the paintings; both genres bring a plot to life before the eye of the beholder. Their rich interpretative potential with regard to contemporary political and social affairs and their formats aside, both the translations of fables into paintings, or more generally animal paintings, and the fable texts themselves invite the viewer to recognize human forms of behavior in the actions of animals. Since antiquity, the genre of animal and fable paintings has been a proven medium enabling artists to indirectly articulate grievances or to teach in a playful fashion the morally correct way of treating fellow human beings. In this respect, it is up to the viewers or readers which conclusions they wish to draw from the magpie fable. In  Joost van den Vondel, De werken van Vondel,  vols., Amsterdam –, vol. , pp. –. Quotations from the Bible or classical sources appear in inscriptions that expand the range of possible meanings and give specific examples of the application of the animal action to human situations. They must be read as interpretative proposals, guiding the reader’s approach to the text and legitimizing and reinforcing the fable’s message by drawing on ancient or biblical history. One can accordingly not only describe the paintings, given their formats and the high drama of the depictions, as a form of animal history painting, but the fable books themselves document a concrete connection between history in the grand sense and the minor histories of animals.  Sale Sotheby’s (Amsterdam),  November , nr. . See also  afb.nr. , kunstwerknr. .  On the displacement from genre to history painting in Gerard de Lairesse see C. Kemmer, “In search of classical form: Gerard de Lairesse’s Groot schilderboek and seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting,” Simiolus  (), pp. –. esp. p. . fable. At first sight one might see in it a coronation of the eagle as the king of the birds. Once we draw the connection to the text of the fable as retold by Joost van den Vondel, however, we recognize that it is once again the courageous magpie who plays the leading role. Unlike de Dene, Vondel proposes three possible candidates for the kingship: the eagle, the swan and the peacock. The turning point takes the same form: the magpie makes its objection, although in Vondel’s retelling it takes a much more defiant and less submissive attitude than in de Dene’s version. It asks ironically whether an enemy could be expected to withdraw from the battlefield merely because he is baffled by the beauty of the peacock’s feathers. The text leaves open which candidate is ultimately most suited to be king. Rather than resolving issues, the fable aims to stimulate the readers own reflections and lead them to self-awareness. Van Kessel’s picture employs the simultaneous depiction of temporally distinct situations, presenting a possible resolution that the text already suggests: the eagle is crowned king of the birds in response to the magpie’s objection. The painting thus introduces an interesting twist in the strategy the birds use to protect themselves against attackers. They simply confer the kingship on the one whom de Dene’s fable ranked as their greatest menace. Jan van Kessel’s studio produced yet another version of the fable; in the records of the Netherlands Institute for Art History it bears the title Bird concert: an allegory of the Order of the Knights of Malta. In this painting, the magpie fable appears as part of a political allegory, as indicated by the insignia of power beneath the eagle. The allegory still awaits full interpretation. Stories in pictures from the world of birds: the courageous magpie any event, the frequent depiction of this particular fable in seventeenth-century painting suggests that there was a widespread interest in the topic of a text that calls for a broader range of qualities in a ruler than mere outward beauty.          