Pieter van Laer was an accomplished printmaker and he produced two series of prints of animals. One series of 8 plates of domestic animals published in 1636 in Rome under the title "Various animals" was dedicated to Don Ferdinando Afan de Ribera, the Spanish Viceroy in Naples. This series of engravings had an important influence on the Dutch animal painter Paulus Potter, in particular the way in which van Laer was able to place figures, animals, buildings and trees in a coherent pictorial space. A second set of 6 plates was entitled "Horses" and depicts the bleak lot of horses belonging to poor peasants.