The Four States of Society – I. A savage family

The Four States of Society – I. A savage family

This sixteenth-century single leaf represents a pair of hairy beings that could be interpreted as a beginning of the dawn of history. However, the landscape that appears is strewn with castles, probably inhabited by people from the painter’s time. Thus savageness here is probably intended to mean savageness as opposed to civilisation, rather than referring to a primal situation in human history.