Fable of the Fox and the Heron

Frans Snyders painted this in 1657, the year he died in Antwerp at about 78. For decades he had been the man Rubens turned to for animals, adding the hounds, the game and the fruit to other painters' compositions. He was also among the first to take a plain Aesop fable and give it the size and drama of a history painting, here on a canvas well over two metres wide. In the story the fox invites the heron to dinner and serves the soup on a flat dish, so the long-billed bird cannot eat a drop. What Snyders shows is the reply: the heron has returned the invitation and set out its meal in a tall narrow jar, into which the fox can only push its snout in vain.