Hope (Spes), from The Virtues

Philips Galle after Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Engraving

Metropolitan Museum of Art

This engraving depicts the allegorical figure of Hope (Spes), who stands balanced atop a large anchor in the middle of a turbulent sea, wearing a beehive as a headdress and holding a sickle and a spade — traditional attributes of the farmer's hope for a good harvest. Around her, scenes of human peril unfold: ships are tossed on a monster-laden sea, prisoners are shackled, and figures flee a raging fire, all evoking the necessity of hope amid suffering. The print was engraved by Philips Galle (1537–1612), a prolific Netherlandish printmaker, after a preparatory drawing by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and published by the prominent Antwerp print merchant Hieronymus Cock. It belongs to Bruegel's celebrated series of the Seven Virtues (1559–1560), conceived as a companion to his earlier Seven Deadly Sins series, and is inscribed with a Latin verse underscoring the indispensability of hope in a life beset by troubles.