The Four Elements. Fire (Borromeo series) - Jan Brueghel the Elder

Brueghel first depicted fire as a huge blaze engulfing the buildings in the background on the right. For the 1st shot, however, he favored the depiction of an immense workshop, where workers (whom Cardinal Federico Borromeo, the painting's commissioner, describes as mythical cyclops) are busy making an impressive number of objects: armor, glassware, jugs, domestic utensils and tools. The power of fire is necessary to produce this enormous quantity of objects: this time, fire is no longer a destructive force as in the background, but an instrument placed at the service of the technical mastery of matter.