Avarice (Avaritia), from the series The Seven Deadly Sins

Description

Avarice translates greed into a crowded world of distorted behavior. A central hooded female figure is surrounded by the handling of coins, while chests and piled sack-like forms suggest accumulation. Grotesque figures and buildings extend the activity across the view. The image makes a familiar failing appear strange, spreading its warning through restless details rather than letting greed remain an abstract word or a single isolated act.

Pieter van der Heyden engraved the work after Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s design for The Seven Deadly Sins, published by Hieronymus Cock in 1558. Bruegel’s surviving preparatory design confirms the relationship between invention and engraved execution. The image’s abundance is part of its meaning: accumulation becomes both a subject and a way of organizing the view. Its moral force emerges through that uneasy mixture of visual fascination and excessive desire.

Read our guide to giclée prints or browse the Pieter Bruegel collection.