ANIMAL LIFE IN ITALIAN PAINTING 



farmyard is gathered together ready to go in. They 

 are exclusively the edible domestic animals. 



The subject of Lazarus and Dives (Vienna) gives 

 him the opportunity of introducing the rich man's open- 

 air larder, which exactly faces the high table where he 

 is feasting under a colonnade. Rows of plates, dishes, 

 ladles, and other implements of cookery are arrayed, 

 and a hare, chickens ready plucked, fish, and other food 

 is displayed. Two dogs lick the poor man's wounds ; ^ 

 a cat and a monkey quarrel amongst the pots and pans. 

 A peacock is the one spot of beauty in the sordid scene, 

 and one imagines him smacking his lips over this. 



Even when he paints the power of Orpheus, it is over 

 the inhabitants of the poultry-yard that he thinks of it 

 as being exercised. Technically he has his merits, but 

 they are the merits of a descending scale, and in his 

 treatment of animals he is felt to be in contrast with the 

 best period of Italian art. 



Caravaggio goes even further, and makes a roast 

 chicken the obvious point of interest in his Supper of 

 Eminaus. 



^ The same incident is painted in the Good Samaritan in the National 

 Gallery. 



114 



