Large Fish Market

Under the table in the foreground lie living seals, and they are the sign that this is no ordinary market. The Kunsthistorisches Museum reads the picture as a display of the sea's abundance, in a type Rubens had developed in Antwerp together with the animal painter Frans Snyders, seals included. Joachim von Sandrart took over their heaped fish, crabs, mussels and oysters and spread them across a canvas about three metres wide.

It was probably painted around 1654 for Guidobald von Thun, who became prince-archbishop of Salzburg that year, and it was presented to him there in 1656. For 150 years it stayed in Salzburg, recorded in the archbishops' residence and at Klessheim palace outside the city. In 1806, after the archbishopric lost its independence and passed to Austria, the canvas was taken to Vienna.