Patientia (Patience)

Engraving after a design by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and engraved by Pieter van der Heyden. From the series "The Seven Virtues".
Published in Antwerp by Hieronymus Cock.
Signed at lower right: Brueghel · Invent ·. At lower left: H.Cock · excude · 1557· Signed at lower right: PVAHE [in monogram]. inscribed at lower center: PATIENTIA ·.
The lower margin has a text: PATIENTIA EST MALORUM QUAE AUT INFERUNTUR, AUT ACCIDUNT, CUM AEQUANIMITATE PERLATIO · Lact · Inst · Lib · 5 ·
Translates to : "Patience is the tranquil endurance of evils that assail you or happen to you. Lactantius, Divinae Institutiones. Book 5".

This beautiful plate shows the allegory of Patience in the midst of monsters and fantastic figures in a typical Flemish landscape. But beyond the strange character of the composition, Bruegel wanted, in a large format plate, to criticize religious power.
In the tree in the center, monks drink or court a prostitute, while on the left, the figure emerging from the egg has a papal bull in his belt and wears the pontifical keys on his hat.
All these details will be censored later, at an unknown date.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1525–1569), was the greatest member of a large and important southern Netherlandish family of artists active for four generations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Born in or near Breda about 1525, Bruegel settled fairly early in Antwerp, where he became a master in the painters’ Guild of Saint Luke between 1551 and 1552.
After a trip to Italy, he began a long-standing association with Hieronymus Cock, whose Antwerp publishing house, At the Four Winds, produced prints on a range of subjects, from parables to landscapes.
Between 1555 and 1563, Bruegel made over forty designs for engravings, capitalizing on the strong market demand for images in the style or manner of Hieronymus Bosch (ca. 1450–1516).

Pieter van der Heyden (Antwerpen, c. 1530 - Berchem, after March 1572) was a Flemish printmaker who is known for his reproductive engravings after works by leading Flemish painters and designers of the 16th century.
He was from 1556 onwards one of the primary engravers of the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Bruegel seems to have preferred working with the artist because of his highly skilled technique and his fidelity to the design he was copying.
Van der Heyden made 26 engravings after designs by Bruegel, the most of any other printmaker.

Pieter van der Heyden marked his prints often with PME, the initials of his Latinized name, Peter Mercinus. He was last mentioned in March 1572. His monogram is shown in the lower right bottom of this print.

Reference: Hollstein-Bastelaer 124, Lebeer 15, Orenstein 55, New Hollstein 20 i/ii)