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How to depict sin, human wickedness and folly? In what is now known as the long sixteenth century, religious and political tensions, and even the weather – this was the low point of the Little Ice Age – prompted a flood of images featuring the seven deadly sins in the Netherlands and the surrounding region. In this publication, four accessibly written essays examine different aspects of the pictorial tradition of the seven deadly sins, with Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s renowned series of prints of the same name as the main focus. A fifth, literary essay describes among other things the fevered visions – strewn with representations of the seven deadly sins – of one of the victims of a series of murders that really did happen in the sixteenth century.

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