Primarily known for his numerous paintings with close-up depictions of animals. Savery's artistic vision and ideas were conveyed by the hidden meaning in his works, expressed through the symbolic interpretation of different animals. Hiss works were highly valued during his lifetime already and the most prestigious European customers desired them in their collections. Savery had a very lively imagination – he could endlessly vary the position and postures of animals in his paintings.... Between 1575-82 Joris Hoefnagel, a student of Bol, painted Animalia for the emperor. In that composition Hoefnagel describes the animal kingdom in correlation with the four elements of nature. Such element-by-element division can also be found in Savery’s works: the land is represented by 4-legged animals; fire by reptiles who, until the modern age, were considered to be immune to fire; air was associated with creatures that fly; and water with those that swim. (http://artrules.ee/art/noahs-ark/)