Hunters attack a hippopotamus and a crocodile that are already fighting each other: three hunters on horseback attack the hippopotamus while a fourth man stabs a crocodile with his sword. Etching by W. van der Leeuw after P. Soutman after Sir P.P. Rubens.

Described as follows by Balis, op. cit. p. 121 (left and right have here been reversed to take account of the reversal of the etching): Three exotically-clad horsemen surround a fiercely roaring hippopotamus which is trampling a crocodile with its right front paw. In the left foreground a half-naked beater lies dead; another, on the right, is pinned to the ground by the crocodile astride the lower part of his body. Two hounds attack the hippopotamus from the right, and a third on the left bites the crocodile's tail.

On Rubens's depiction of the hippopotamus, "It is known that in modern times no living specimen of this beast was seen in Western Europe before 1850. ... the only possible explanation is that Rubens must have studied the two preserved and stuffed hippopotamuses that were exhibited in Rome in 1601 by the Neapolitan surgeon Federico Zerenghi. ... Thus it was Rubens who first provided a picture of the hippopotamus as we know it." (Balis, op. cit. pp. 72-73)

[Amsterdam?] : C. Dankertz excudit, [between 1600 and 1699]

1 print : etching, with engraving ; image 44.3 x 64 cm

P.P. Rubens inven.t. WP Leeuw fecit

Arnout Balis, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, part XVIII, Landscapes and hunting scenes; II: Hunting scenes, London 1986, pp. 118-123, no. 5, copy no. 15 (p. 120)

Wellcome Collection 3055863i

After a painting by Rubens in the opposite direction ca. 1615-1618 in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich