Pieter Bruegel l’Ancien, auteur de la première représentation graphique des chaînes alimentaires

Abstract

Pieter Bruegel the Elder -author of the first graphic food-chains scheme. The drawing of netherlandish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder “ The Big Fish Eat the Little Fish” reflects perhaps not political allusions, as it is interpreted in the history of art, but a graphic food-chains scheme. It is possible that the picture engraving, stored in the British Museum, has influenced the creation of the food-chains concept by British ecologists Johnstone (1908), Hardy (1924) and Elton (1927). The taxonomic attachment of organisms depicted in the drawing has been determined.