ANIMAL LIFE IN ITALIAN PAINTING 



The noise is described by Seebohm as monotonous 

 as a passing bell, and almost as melancholy.^ Is this 

 the significance of the bird's presence here? 



A S^. Je7^ome in his (very convenient and hygienic) 

 Study, by the same painter (National Gallery), contains 

 a partridge,- a peacock, and a cat, as well as the thin- 

 legged lion. Birds fly in and out of the window. The 

 Saint's care for the creatures is shown by a bowl for 

 food or water which is placed on the steps. 



A little dog sits on the steps in front of the cere- 

 mony of the Circumcision in Marco Marziale's picture 

 in the National Gallery. Close to is a fly, which is 

 walking up the marble. 



In an Adoration of the Magi (Glasgow Gallery), 

 considered by Sir J. C. Robinson to be by Antonello, 

 there are two incidents which occur also in the Piero 

 della Francesca Nativity already described. The 

 pictures are quite unlike in composition, but in each 

 there is a braying ass, and a magpie perching on the 

 roof of the shed. 



^ Bowdler Sharpe, Handbook to the Birds of Great Britain, vol. ii. p. 83. 



Pliny speaks of the horned owl {bubo) as of bad omen, and as " specially 

 funereal." " It is greatly abhorred in all auspices of a public nature. The 

 monster of the night, its voice is heard not with any tuneful note, but 

 emitting a sort of shriek. Hence it is that it is looked upon as a dreadful 

 omen to see it in a city, or even so much as in the daytime." (Bk. x. ch. 16.) 



* The Ano7iiino, who saw the picture in the early sixteenth century, 

 calls this bird a quail. 



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