# The Donkey Laden with Food, from Emblematic Figures of Animals

- By: Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne (after Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder (Flemish, c. 1520-1590))
- Date: 1633
- Medium: Engraving on ivory laid paper
- Classification: Print
- Dimensions: Plate: 27.3 × 20.5 cm (10 3/4 × 8 1/8 in.); Sheet: 27.4 × 20.7 cm (10 13/16 × 8 3/16 in.)
- Culture: Flanders
- Credit line: William McCallin McKee Memorial Endowment
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/51392)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/web/22e02cbdbab3452fb21e93d31ad101c9.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

Prints of animals could be accurate and fanciful simultaneously. This finely engraved yet slightly caricatured scene from Aesop’s Fables depicts a donkey laden with fine food and wine who nonetheless happily gnaws at a prickly thistle instead. Moral interpretations of the text have ranged from “One man’s meat is another man’s poison” to a critique of stinginess. Though unsigned, this humorous image of feast and famine set off a chain of copies, ironically ending with a dozen Aesop roundels that decorated the back of trenchers, wooden plates used for the final fruit and nut course in England.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0