Fish Stall

The sinuous lines of fish, familiar from childhood to an artist whose father owned one of Antwerp’s biggest eating-houses, seem made for dynamic Baroque compositions. The precision with which Snyders depicts the denizens of seas and rivers delights zoologists, but the abundance of his many Fish Stalls is ruled not by any Linnaean hierarchy: the crustaceans whose shedding of their shells symbolized the resurrection are superior to dead fish.