ANIMAL LIFE IN ITALIAN PAINTING 



On which the first, whose force her first doth bring 



Herselfe quite through the body doth engore, 



And falleth down to grounde like senselesse thing. 



But th' other, not so swift as she before, 



Failes of her souse, and passing by doth hurt no more." 



The Florentine engraver, Maso Finiguerra (1426- 

 1464), represents in a plate "of various wild animals 

 hunting and fighting" (British Museum), two birds, not 

 only in relatively the same position, but with exactly the 

 same outline. There are also lions, a cheetah, ducks, 

 and hares, boars, and stags being hunted by their 

 appropriate hounds. 



The Flemish Stradanus (Giovanni della Strada), who 

 worked at Florence a century later, and was an appren- 

 tice to Michael Angelo, also represents this episode in 

 an engraving in the " Venationes " of 1567.^ 



Another falcon in the foreground of the Berlin 

 picture has got its victim down. A man rides between the 

 humps of a Bactrian camel. A peacock, with a curiously 



^ But Mr. Baillie-Grohman, commenting on this, says : "It shows that 

 the artist fully believed the legend, sanctioned even by such late writers as 

 Walter Scott, that the heron when hard pressed and stooped at by the 

 hawk will point his beak upwards, and thus receive the descending enemy 

 upon its point, thereby inflicting serious injury, if not killing him outright. 

 According to modern experts, this pretty story has no foundation in fact. 

 It seems extraordinary that for centuries artists went on painting incidents 

 which they never could have seen ; scores, if not hundreds, of pictures of 

 what was once a favourite and aristocratic sport depicting this very occur- 

 rence" {Country Life ^ December 16, 191 1). It certainly does seem extra- 

 ordinary ; perhaps herons have changed their tactics. 



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