Cockfight

By 1636 this canvas was hanging in the Alcázar, the royal palace in Madrid, and it had got there as a present. The giver was the Marquis of Leganés, a Spanish commander who spent years at the court in Brussels and came home with well over a thousand paintings, most of them Flemish. A Flemish poultry yard was exactly the kind of picture he could hand to Philip IV. The museum's 19th-century catalogue described what is in it, and the description still works: two cocks are watching each other and working themselves up to the attack, two chicks are copying them, two more are staring at a small toad, hens stand about in various attitudes, and there are two goldfinches, with a river, some trees and a hut in the distance.