This Little Frog Is Trying to Tell You Something
Drawings curator Stephanie Schrader digs into his timeless message
Allegory of Avarice, about 1609, Jacques de Gheyn II. Pen and brown ink. Getty Museum
Body Content
As far as frogs go, this little guy is admittedly not the most attractive.
With his beady eye, exaggerated leg, and grasping claws, the frog serves as both a representation of real life (artist Jacques de Gheyn II likely drew this while looking at a dead specimen), and also a moral lesson. But what is de Gheyn, via the frog, trying to say?
In the third season of Getty’s Close Looking video series, Getty curators explore the details of artworks they cherish. For this episode, drawings curator Stephanie Schrader dives in to the ways the frog serves as an allegory of avarice: a fancy word for greed. "What's really exceptional about this work is yes, it spoke to 17th-century Dutch citizens about greed, but it also speaks to us today," Schrader says.
Learn more by watching the video below, and see this artwork and other drawings that visualize moral lessons in the Getty Center exhibition Virtue and Vice: Allegory in European Drawing before it closes on June 7.
Get an insider’s view of more works of art in Getty’s Close Looking series, in which art experts and enthusiasts around Getty share some of their favorite works of art.
