The Dutch painters of the golden age turned to realism instead of religious subjects, as portrait painting was much more lucrative. Dutch genre paintings tend to illustrate everyday life at all levels of society, and cats, essential to most households, are often in these still lifes and portraits. In The Katzen Familie (1650), the Dutch […]
CATS IN BAROQUE PAINTINGS (Part 1)
August 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment
By the 1590’s, the Baroque style was just beginning to spread across Europe. Noted for its dramatic use of line and vivid color, the style, through its energy and movement, expressed power and control. Favored by the church, the main patron of art at the time, the easily understood Baroque style conveyed the church’s religious, […]
CATS IN RENAISSANCE ART
July 26, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Cats in Renaissance Art Continued….. Relying heavily upon classical Greek models, the 1504 engraving, Adam and Eve by the German, Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), captures Eve right at the moment she accepts the apple of knowledge from the serpent. Surrounding both Adam and Eve are a variety of animals that symbolize differing human temperaments. The cat […]
THE DOMESTIC CAT IN EARLY MODERN PERIOD ART
July 19, 2013 By Leave a Comment
THE CAT IN EARLY MODERN PERIOD ART The Renaissance, which ushered in a rebirth of classical thought, first started in Italy and then spread to the whole of Europe. Renaissance artists such as Bosch, Dürer, Ghirlandaio, DaVinci and many others produced exquisite paintings that included the cat as a symbol of domesticity, fertility-lust, treachery and evil. Most often cats found their […]
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