ANIMAL LIFE IN ITALIAN PAINTING 



is represented as taking place not " in the house " but 

 in a landscape in front of a palace. Our old friend 

 the parrot is on the edge of a brook looking at a hare 

 which is jumping over ; and another bird is beak to nose 

 with a rabbit. A fallow deer sits by the brook. Car- 

 paccio may have seen a hare jumping over a stream, but 

 it is doubtful whether it would do so unless pressed. 

 Perhaps the parrot has said something startling. In the 

 Birth of the Vi7'gin (in the same gallery), the usual 

 scene of food being taken into the bedchamber of St. 

 Anna, two rabbits are painted nibbling a cabbage-leaf in 

 the middle of the room. In the A^tnunciation (Venice, 

 Accademia) there is a peacock, a pheasant, and doves 

 perching on the tester of the porch. 



A curious picture, lately recognised by Sir Claude 

 Phillips as being by Carpaccio, is the Meditation on 

 the Passion, formerly attributed to Mantegna. In the 

 background deer are being stalked by leopards, and 

 one has just been pulled down. There are several 

 birds, including the now very familiar parrot, which 

 Sir Claude does not mention, but which is in itself 

 strong evidence of authorship.^ 



Morelli says that another Venetian, Girolamo da 



^ Burlington Magazine, 191 1. The picture was in the collection of Sir 

 Wm. Abdy, and was exhibited as a Mantegna (it has his signature, inac- 

 curately spelled, on a cartellind) at the Royal Academy Winter Exhibition 

 ofi88i. 



80 



