The Fox Who Feigned Death
Feigns death, lures the hungry birds close, and eats them instead.
- Work
- Bestiary (Aberdeen Bestiary)
- Artist / creator
- Unknown English illuminator
- Origin & date
- England (probably the North Midlands), c. 1200
- Held by
- University of Aberdeen
Format
The full-resolution color-managed file — yours to print, study, and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan's resolution supports sizes up to 8x10 cleanly.
Size
$24.00
The story
The fox, the bestiary warns, is an animal entirely made of tricks. Hungry and unable to hunt, it rolls in red earth until it looks bloodied, then lies motionless on its back, tongue lolling, holding its breath until it seems truly dead. Carrion birds descend to feed — and the fox springs up and eats them instead. This folio's border turns the trick into pure ornament: birds swoop from every corner toward the sprawled red fox, while a ring of small fox heads peers up from a painted river below, watching their own kind's deception replayed. Medieval commentators read the fox as the Devil himself, who feigns death to every soul, luring the unwary close with a show of harmlessness before he strikes. It is one of the bestiary's bluntest moral warnings, wrapped in one of its liveliest compositions.
About this reproduction
- Faithful reproduction of a public-domain work, sourced from University of Aberdeen’s open-access release.
- Printed to order on archival cotton-rag stock, pigment inks rated 100+ years.
- Color-managed to the source scan.
- Available as a Gold-Foil Premium Edition — a metallic accent print evoking the illuminator’s gold, for a piece from one of the tradition’s luminous, gilded manuscripts.
- Ships in 5–8 business days; satisfaction guaranteed.
See it framed
Room
Frame
Shown as a 8x10″ archival print, true to the piece's own proportions, on a real photographed wall.
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