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On the panel fixed to the tree the inscription in Latin reads: "As the Infant Cupid was stealing honey from the hollow, the bee stung the thief on the finger. Thus does brief and transitory pleasure harm us too: it is mingled with sharp pain." This refers to the nineteenth idyll Keriokleptes (The Honey Thief) of Theocritus (310-250 BC).
Cranach executed at least fifteen versions of this scene the earliest being in the National Gallery, London.
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