Lucha de gallos

Lucha de gallos — a cockfight — dated 1650 and held at the Museo del Prado, depicts one of the oldest and most widespread forms of animal combat sport in European and world culture. Cockfighting was practiced at all social levels in seventeenth-century Europe, from village festivities to aristocratic entertainment, and its depiction by a painter as prestigious as Snyders gave the subject a legitimacy it might otherwise have lacked. The two cocks face each other with the full aggressive display of their species — raised hackles, extended neck, feet raised for the spur. Snyders's knowledge of roosters from his early career — he had painted cocks since at least 1610 — made him ideally qualified for this subject. The Prado's late Snyders holdings include several animal combat subjects, and this cockfight is among the most socially revealing: a subject that crossed class boundaries in a way that boar hunting did not.

Two cocks facing each other in full aggressive display require Snyders to show both animals simultaneously in the specific postures of avian threat: raised hackles creating a ruff of erectile feathers around the neck, the wing slightly dropped on the fighting side, the weight forward and spur-foot raised. The composition is typically bilaterally structured, with both birds occupying symmetric space around a central axis. The arena or cockpit setting provides a simple neutral ground.