Gluttony (Gula) from The Seven Deadly Sins

Description

Gluttony turns appetite into a densely populated world of fantastic banquets. Grotesque figures, bowls, pots and strange structures crowd together, while enlarged food-like forms interrupt the scene. The engraving refuses to let excess remain an abstract idea: it makes it visible across the whole composition. Looking becomes an exploration of connected incidents, with each detail adding to the sense of a world overtaken by consumption.

Pieter van der Heyden engraved the work after a design by Pieter Bruegel the Elder for The Seven Deadly Sins, published by Hieronymus Cock in 1558. The series uses vivid imagery to consider familiar failings. Here the visual richness is deliberately uneasy: the same profusion that attracts the eye also reinforces the subject’s warning. The result is an image whose entertainment and moral force remain closely intertwined.

Read our guide to giclée prints, browse more Pieter Bruegel prints, or explore Avarice (Avaritia) from The Seven Deadly Sins.