ANIMAL LIFE IN ITALIAN PAINTING 



Morando, 

 1486-1522 



Bonifazio, 

 1487-1553 



Sante Conversazioni. Two rabbits are playing together 

 in the picture of this class known as The Seamsh'ess 

 Madomia (Rome, Corsini Gallery), and among the birds 

 represented are partridges and a guinea-fowl. 



Paolo Morando, who was a native of Verona, and 

 whose principal pictures are still to be seen there, has in 

 the National Gallery a St. Rock with the Aftgel, in 

 which the Saint's dog is not by any means painted as 

 an emblem only. It is the little Bolognese breed, and 

 looks downward out of the picture with its ears slightly 

 raised, a lifelike pose. 



Bonifazio di Pitati, called Veronese, paints four 

 dogs in his Parable of Dives and Lazarus (Venice, 

 Accademia) ; one looks up at a puppy carried in a 

 kind of pouch on the back of a 'cello player. There 

 is also a man with a falcon on his wrist. 



In the background of a Madonna and Child with 

 Saints (National Gallery) a lion is worrying a sheep- 

 dog. Sir Frederick Burton at least interprets it in 

 this way in the Catalogue of 1890. The lion would 

 perhaps connect the incident with St. Jerome, who is 

 painted behind St. James. Sir E. T. Cook calls the 

 animals a wolf and a sheep — " Notice the significance 

 of the incident in the middle distance — a shepherd asleep, 

 while a wolf is devouring a sheep." ^ 



^ A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, 1901, vol. i, p. 582. 



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