Sunday, November 2, 2014

Cats in Art: My Very Own Renaissance Kitty

UPDATED--See bottom of post!

I was sitting on the recliner the other day.  Tizzy, who had been on my chest getting stroked and petted, either got too warm or had had enough cat love, and went to lay at the bottom of the recliner.  She likes the spot where the footrest comes up: it makes a slightly V-shaped "bed" to lay in.

As the sun shone on Tizzy, she looked exactly to me as though she were a Renaissance kitty.  I had my camera within reach and snapped this image:

[image credit Gary]

Why do I refer to her as a Renaissance kitty?  See any parallels with this image?

[image credit Amazon]

This is the cover of the Zuffi book that has served as inspiration for my Cats in Art series of posts that I've been running on Sundays here for a couple of years now.  The book's dust cover is a detail from the Frederico Barocchi painting The Annunciation (1584, oil on wood transferred onto canvas, approx 97" x 67", held in the Vatican Art Gallery collection  Santa Maria Degli Angeli, Assisi, Italy).

Those dimensions above are for the entire painting, which is BIG--about 8 feet high and nearly 6 feet wide.  The kitty is snuggled in the lower left corner and by my reckoning covers a space about the size of an ordinary sheet of paper. 

Just for kicks here's the entire image of The Annunciation, with the marvelous kitty way down there in the lower left corner:

[image credit here]

So...if I ever make it to the Vatican, the Pope will just have to wait until I've scoped out this magnificent painting.

UPDATE: I was wrong about the museum: there painting is actually held at Santa Maria Degli Angeli, Assisi, Italy.  How do I know this?  The bride and I were actually just in Italy--and at the Vatican--a couple of weeks ago, and the painting was nowhere to be found.  My apologies for the error; I had written this post some months back, scheduled it for 2 Nov, and did not review it before it posted.  Oops!

 

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